Mozart Edition

One of the finest and most charismatic tenors on the international classical music scene, Rolando Villazon’s many best-selling recordings have covered an extraordinary range of musical styles from his great opera roles to the Baroque, Mexican favourites and popular song. For his new solo album, Rolando brings his lustrous Latin timbre to the rarely recorded concert arias of Mozart. He is joined by ‘Britain’s Finest Orchestra’ [The Arts Desk], the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the Music Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Sir Antonio Pappano.

Very late in his career Sándor Végh came together with the world class orchestra renowned for its supremely Viennese interpretations of Mozart: the Vienna Philharmonic. It was not until 1991 that Végh and the orchestra worked together briefly, in the Konzerthaus in Vienna, and this led to a memorable concert during the Mozart Week, on 30 January 1992 in the Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg. Two of the “late” Mozart symphonies were played, the Symphony in G minor, K. 550 and the Symphony in E flat major, K. 543. The recording of this legendary interpretation can be heard on the third CD in the edition.

MOZART 111 combines the best of the Austrian master's music with the best of Deutsche Grammophon's Mozart recordings, bringing together a total of 111 works, while retaining, as far as possible, the original album releases with their cover art. There's enough of everything here to stock a shop, as they say, in performances that have stood the test of time and performances that make you sit up and listen to Mozart afresh the perfect way to discover, rediscover and savor the incomparable genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

At the end of April 1791, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart applied for the position of second Kapellmeister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, hoping to inherit the position from Leopold Hofmann, the incumbent Kapellmeister, the City Council of Vienna accepted Mozart’s petition in a strongly worded decree as a basis for the text in the vocal passages of his Sieben Klangräume accompanying the Unfinished Fragments of Mozart’s Requiem KV 626.

Unquestionably, the clarinet quintets of Mozart and Brahms have earned time-honored and well-deserved places in the repertoire of clarinetists worldwide. In the informative and well-written annotations by Eric Hoeprich, we read that “they embody the maturity, depth, experience, and possibly even a premonition of an otherworldliness soon to be experienced firsthand.”

Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre present a new recording of Mozarts Mass in C Minor, the iconic opening Kyrie of which is among the most cherished religious music ever written. Mozart performed parts of the Mass in 1783, but the score remained unfinished, making the use of a scholarly edition necessary for a complete performance. Despite its unfinished state, Mozarts Mass in C Minor has gained popularity and now enjoys a place in the choral core repertory. For this recording, made in connection to live performances, Minkowski has chosen Helmut Eders 1985 edition for the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe.

“This is not at all what I wrote, but play it like this. Do play it this way!” exclaimed Dmitri Shostakovich after Yudina performed the freshly written 24 Preludes and Fugues. This exclamation contains the key to understanding of Maria Yudina’s performing art – a controversial and disputable one that left a profound imprint on the cultural environment of the twentieth century. The 10-album set is the biggest part of Maria Yudina’s surviving studio and concert recordings from the Melodiya archive made between 1948 and 1969.