Mozart; Serenade No. 10 "gran Partita" Schubert; 6 German Dances Orchestrated by Anton Webern

This CD's main attraction for many will be Gil Shaham's velvety violin in gorgeous, largely off-beat music. Others will relish these Schubert works in arrangements that replace the piano with the expert guitar of Göran Söllscher, enhancing the impression of hearing Schubert's music in the intimate domestic setting for which it was written. Most of the works are short, melodically rich dance-based gems on which Shaham and Söllscher lavish a Romantic tonal fullness and freedom rarely heard these days. Sometimes that's a bit too much of a good thing, as works like the Violin Sonata in D veer close to the sentimental.

“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.

Mozart's Serenade for winds in B flat, K.361/370a, commonly known as the Gran Partita, is one of the earliest masterpieces written for wind ensemble. The composer had composed other works for similar ensembles, but the Gran Partita stands apart because of its size (13 instruments), its length (seven movements lasting about 50 minutes), and most of all, because of the nobility, eloquence, and wit of the music.

Ensemble Zefiro was founded in 1989 by oboists Alfredo Bernardini and Paolo Grazzi together with bassoonist Alberto Grazzi and consists of talented musicians drawn from leading Baroque orchestras. Zefiro regularly appears to great acclaim at major European, Asian and South American festivals.

Along with his contemporaries, Mozart was often called upon to fulfil the aristocracy's musical requests destined for all kinds of society events. He, for sure, knew how to provide a much profounder dimension to any genre which did not normally have too many expectations placed upon it and the Gran Partita, without losing its playful aim, is a superb example of this. In a similar way, the Divertimentos of Martín y Soler on Una cosa rara, and of Went on Die Entführung aus dem Serail, fill out an accurate portrait of what was, in the 18th century, music meant for noble entertainment.