Mozart: Christian Blackshaw

Christian Li walks in the footsteps of Mendelssohn, bringing the music from his travels around Europe to life. Recorded with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, we follow Mendelssohn’s own journeys, with pieces written in Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Munich, Venice & London, including music from the composer’s own inspirations and contemporaries: J. S. Bach, Mozart & Schubert.

The greatest of Mozart's wind serenades and the toughest of Alban Berg's major works might seem an unlikely pairing, but in an interview included with the sleeve notes for this release, Pierre Boulez points up their similarities. Both works are scored for an ensemble of 13 wind instruments (with solo violin and piano as well in the Berg) and both include large-scale variations as one of their movements - and Boulez makes the comparisons plausible enough in these lucid performances. It's rare to hear him conducting Mozart, too, and if the performance is a little brisker and more strait-laced than ideal, the EIC's phrasing is a model of clarity and good taste. It's the performance of the Berg, though, that makes this such an important issue; both soloists, Mitsuko Uchida and Christian Tetzlaff, are perfectly attuned to Boulez's approach - they have given a number of performances of the Chamber Concerto before - and the combination of accuracy and textural clarity with the highly wrought expressiveness that is the essence of Berg's music is perfectly caught.

Considering that Mozart's Divertimento in E-flat is far and away the greatest string trio ever written, and one of the unquestionable monuments of chamber music generally, it doesn't get the attention that it surely deserves from either record labels or collectors. Perhaps the dearth of regularly constituted string trios (as opposed to quartets) has something to do with it, but the fact remains that there is no greater testament to Mozart's genius than this epic, nearly 50-minute-long masterpiece in six movements that contains not a second that fails to rise to the highest level of textural gorgeousness and supreme melodic inspiration. Happily, most performances understand how special the music is, and give it their best effort. This one is no exception. The Zimmerman Trio plays with remarkably accurate intonation and a ravishing tone that's also mindful of the Classical style. Schubert's single-movement trio makes the perfect coupling. It seems to grow right out of the Mozart until the end of the exposition, when Schubert suddenly sails in with some typically arresting harmony.

Let’s put aside the fact that the music on this disc has virtually nothing to do with what the title suggests–works written or performed by Mozart in Mannheim–and just enjoy what really is here: a huge mass by the distinguished director of the renowned Mannheim court orchestra (1753-78), and three Mozart choruses refitted with sacred texts to rescue them from the obscurity assured by the failure of the play, Thamos, King of Egypt, for which they originally were written. The mass, at 35 minutes, is a substantial work, with an opening that sounds more like an opera overture than a prelude to a sacred service. However, this reflects what then had become known as the “Mannheim style”, taking full advantage of the dramatic possibilities of a gigantic and very well-trained orchestra and a near-theatrical tradition for presentation of church music.

This CD presents three of the most well known and most performed concertos for oboe in the instrument’s repertoire. It is often said that the classical era is full of intrigue and mystery, and the history of music is no exception. However, time hides as much as it enlightens, and the ancient adage “Veritas filia Temporis” (Truth is the daughter of Time) often solves these riddles.

For the fourth volume in this collection dedicated to Mozart concertos by the younger generation of performers, the Orpheum Foundation and Alpha Classics present the Concertos nos. 23 and 24 (K488 & 491) performed by the British pianist Julian Trevelyan, who was awarded three prizes at the Géza Anda Competition in Zurich in 2021 and, at the age of sixteen, became the youngest-ever prizewinner at the Marguerite Long Competition in Paris in 2015. ‘Mozart’s music is full of life, humour and enjoyment. My life wouldn’t feel fulfilled if I didn’t have his music’, says the young musician, who is accompanied here by one of the most eminent Mozartian maestros, Christian Zacharias, conducting the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Ferras was born at Le Touquet in 1933, he began studying the violin with his father, who was a pupil of Marcel Chailley. He entered the Conservatoire de Nice as a student of Charles Bistesi in 1941, and in 1943 obtained the First Prize. In 1944 he went to the Conservatoire de Paris. In 1946 he won the First Prize in both disciplines (violin and chamber music), and started his performing career with the Pasdeloup Orchestra under Albert Wolff, and later Paul Paray. He worked with Romanian violinist and composer George Enescu, who also acted as an instructor. Ferras premiered the Violin Concerto by Federico Elizalde, under the direction of Gaston Poulet.

Were just one example to be given of the richness and diversity of Mozart's achievements, Concertos Nos. 23 & 24 would undoubtedly make excellent candidates. Completed almost simultaneously in Vienna in early 1786, the two concertos contrast starkly and seem to have been written years apart – or by two distinct yet connected minds of equal genius. Even more astonishing is the fact that they were written in parallel with the first masterpiece of the Da Ponte trilogy, The Marriage of Figaro, while sharing with it very few stylistic similarities.

Matthias Bamert’s survey of music by Mozart’s contemporaries continues with this elegant programme of Cannabich Symphonies. Harmonically conservative, lavishly scored, and full of the mannerist crescendi and rising figures the Mannheim Orchestra was famous for, these are fascinating examples of the style gallant. Though Cannabich had found his way to sonata form in the G major symphony, something of Telemann’s programmatic writing hangs over the Symphony in A major, while baroque affects are yet more keenly felt in the D major Symphony. The London Mozart Players’ pristine sound and careful phrasing is highly enjoyable throughout.