Mozart: Christian Blackshaw

Mao Fujita, one of the most sought after pianists of his generation, debuts with a major recording project – the eagerly anticipated studio recording of Mozart’s complete Piano Sonatas, presented across 5 CDs. With an innate musical sensitivity and naturalness to his artistry, Mao Fujita has already impressed many leading musicians as one of those special talents which comes along only rarely.

This double-CD group of Mozart violin-and-piano sonatas can stand on its own, and the title merely reads Mozart Violin Sonatas. It is, however, the third installment in a consistently fine Mozart cycle from pianist Cédric Tiberghien and violinist Alina Ibragimova. Deeper in the graphics the sonatas are denoted as being "for keyboard and violin," and indeed it is the keyboard that plays the dominant role even as the ways in which Mozart shakes up this configuration is part of the interest.

Joseph Keilberth conducts Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 with a stern lyricism not unlike that found on George Szell’s Cleveland recording. Keilberth’s quick tempos, sensitive yet unsentimental phrasing (particularly so in the first movement), and clear textures make the music sound with a compelling freshness and vibrancy that you would better expect from a modern authentic-style performance than one from December, 1966. If anything, the Brahms Second is even finer. A wholly natural flow characterizes this reading, as if the music were a living thing, devoid of any need for interventionist interpretation. Under Keilberth the first movement’s melancholy tinged with joyfulness emerges freely, while the Adagio emerges as a single rapturous, cogent paragraph. Even the studied finale relaxes and sounds less rigorously Beethovenian.

Recorded between 1989 and 2004, the Hagen Quartet's recordings of Mozart's complete music for string quartet is clearly the finest set of the works released in the early digital age. For one thing, because the collection includes not only the 23 canonical string quartets but also the three early Divertimenti for string quartet, the five Fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier arranged by Mozart, and the late Adagio and Fugue in C minor, their set really is the complete music for string quartet.

Elisabeth Leonskaja is one of the most celebrated pianists of our time, remaining true to herself and to her music, and in doing so, is following in the footsteps of the great Russian musicians of the Soviet era, such as Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels."A kaleidoscopic Mozart with a lifetime's wisdom and experience behind it" according to The Arts Desk after a Wigmore Hall concert.

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.

Cet album Cascavelle reprend ce qui semble être l'intégralité d'un concert Mozart de Clara Haskil, Otto Klemperer et l'Orchestre du Gürzenich de Cologne en 1956, complété par le Concerto de Schumann de quelques semaines postérieur avec Ernest Ansermet et son orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Comme date d'enregistrement la notice indique le 09 septembre 1956 pour Mozart et le 10 octobre 1956 pour Schumann alors que trône en fronton de la couverture de l'album un superbe « Live recording – Montreux April 9th 1956 ». Pourtant c'est bien cette dernière date d'avril qui semble erronée, le concert Mozart ayant bel et bien été donné dans le cadre du Septembre musical de Montreux.

F. Gulda was, according to eminent cellist Pierre Fournier, the foremost pianist of his generation. And HIS generation emcompassed big names like Alfred Brendel, Ingrid Haebler, Jorg Demus, and perhaps, even Maurizio Pollini. It is a great pity that Gulda wasn't in league with 'the' eminent conductor Herbert von Karajan. This precluded many otherwise hot exposures of Gulda in discography. If pianists like Uchida could leave a complete set of Mozart sonatas, if Christoph Eschenbach could leave yet another complete set with good critical acclaim, certainly Friedrich Gulda's Mozart sonatas (and concerti) would have been hailed by ALL as the greatest ever!

It would be hard to find more appealing treatments of Mozart's wind concertos than these from Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music, featuring a distinguished group of period-instrument soloists. Leading the way, and playing a deliciously mellow-sounding basset clarinet, Anthony Pay gives a splendid account of what is surely Mozart's most beautiful concerto, the Clarinet Concerto in A, K. 622. Pay's shadings are soft and natural, his embellishments simply marvelous, and he and Hogwood are right on the mark when it comes to tempo, expression, and accent.