Mozart Sampson

A new performing edition by Masato Suzuki, based on the autograph by Mozart and taking account of earlier completions by Eybler and Sussmayr. He has composed a new “Amen Fugue” to close the “Sequentia”, based on the sketch discovered in Berlin in 1960.

The unprecedented expansion of music in the age of enlightenment
The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down.

Conductor Daniel Reuss' splendid new recording of Handel's Solomon expands the extraordinarily broad range of music, including works by Bach, Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Ligeti, Stefan Wolpe, and the Bang on a Can composers, in which he has shown his mastery. His 2006 recording of Martin's Le vin herbé was one of the highlights of the year. Handel scored the oratorio for unusually large choral and orchestral forces, and the sound of this performance, with the RIAS-Kammerchor and Akademie für Alte Musik, Berlin, is warmly humanistic, beautifully paced, and tonally sumptuous, and is sung and played with stylistic assurance and lively dramatic passion.

The Blu-ray Experience II: Opera, Ballet & Theatre: includes opera, ballet and theatre highlights from the Opus Arte catalogue, and gives everyone the opportunity to experience the stunning quality of High Definition picture and sound, at an extremely competitive price. Including world-class artists such Carlos Acosta, Darcy Bussell, Sarah Connolly, Miyako Yoshida, Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato, Adetomiwa Edun, Gerald Finley, this is a must-have purchase this autumn. Blu-ray offers an outstanding audio and visual experience, with up to six times the resolution of standard definition DVD, and up to 5.1 channels of High Definition surround sound.

If your ideal vocal recording places the performer next to your seat and your ideal vocal performance has the performer singing directly into your ear, this disc by mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozená will be just about ideal. No matter what the repertoire – and Kozená performs everything from Bach to Gounod to Shostakovich – and no matter what the context – and Kozená takes on everything from song to opera to oratorio – Kozená is right next to the listener, singing straight into his/her ear. Given her exceedingly warm tone, her extremely rich delivery, and her extraordinarily sibilant pronunciation, Kozená's intimate delivery may be too much for those with heart conditions or those all too easily affected by singers. But for those made of sterner stuff, Kozená's performances here will be the stuff dreams are made of.

The King’s Consort’s latest foray into the studio brings us a thrilling new recording of Michael Haydn’s Requiem, and reveals the little-known ‘St Ursula’ Mass to be a truly exceptional work. The Requiem was composed in response to tragedy, the death of Haydn’s patron—the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg—providing the official cloak for an outpouring of grief as much inspired by the death of the composer’s infant daughter. In itself the work is a memorable and confident example of the genre, but its deserved fame has been somewhat eclipsed by the many striking similarities between the Haydn and Mozart Requiems; when Wolfgang Amadeus composed what was to be his last—and most famous—work a full twenty years after Haydn’s memorial to the archbishop had been first performed, he doubtless intended it as the highest of praise to his friend that he borrowed melodies, rhythms, scoring, structure … Such points of musicological interest must no longer be allowed to obscure the worth of the Haydn’s original magnum opus.

In Gustav Mahler's first four symphonies many of the themes originate in his own settings of folk poems from the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn). A case in point, Symphony No. 4 is built around a single song, Das himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life) which Mahler had composed some eight years earlier, in 1892. The song presents a child's vision of Heaven and is hinted at throughout the first three movements. In the fourth, marked ‘Sehr behaglich’ (Very comfortably), the song is heard in full from a solo soprano instructed by Mahler to sing: ‘with serene, childlike expression; completely without parody!’

This program also makes a perfect introduction to the world of the cantatas in general for anyone who loves Bach's instrumental music or larger vocal works (like the B minor Mass), but who has been hesitating before taking the plunge into the vast sea of his cantata production. Why? Simple: two of these pieces contain music found elsewhere in Bach's output. For example, the first chorus of BWV 120 became the concluding number (Et expecto) of the B minor Mass "Credo". BWV 29 opens with an almost shockingly brilliant arrangement (as an organ concerto) of the opening movement of the E major violin partita, followed by the chorus that appears in the B minor Mass as both the "Gratias" and the "Dona Nobis Pacem" (the German original means exactly the same thing as the Gratias: "We thank thee," making the adaptation entirely apropos). All three cantatas feature brilliant writing for trumpets (four of them in BWV 119) and drums, and were written for civic ceremonies in Leipzig. And if the words are often less than inspiring to us now, no one can argue that Bach didn't rise to the occasion musically.

Since founding Bach Collegium Japan in 1990, Masaaki Suzuki has established himself as a leading authority on the works of Bach. He has remained their Music Director ever since, taking them regularly to major venues and festivals in Europe and the USA and building up an outstanding reputation for the expressive refinement and truth of his performances.