Operas of Mozart

While today it is easy to listen to almost any piece at any time and in almost any place, before the invention of the record it was quite complicated: you had to go to a concert or to the opera or you played yourself… In the emerging bourgeoisie, arrangements of the most popular works in instrumentations suitable for chamber music were popular and, of course, Mozart's famous operas were at the top of the popularity scale. In many places, publishers set about transcribing Mozart's works for small and very small ensembles. The two violinists Florian Deuter and Mónica Waisman have found a whole series of such contemporary arrangements of Mozart's operas and piano sonatas in "pocket format" for violin duo, which bring the well-known melodies into the new form with much wit and finesse. In the process, the listener can grin and observe the reduction of the full sound and delve into delightful details of house music around 1800.

Mozart was always an important and regular feature of Solti's career as conductor in the opera house and concert hall as well as in the recording studio and also as a pianist, and at the start of his career he participated in performances of Die Zauberflöte at Salzburg under Toscanini in 1937. Solti conducted Die Zauberflöte himself at Salzburg in 1956 to mark the 200th anniversary of Mozart's birth and again in 1991 when he made his second recording of the opera. Solti's first recording of Die Zauberflöte was made in Vienna in 1969 and was his first complete Mozart opera recording.

This album of Mozart opera overtures will certainly delight the Mozart fan, as performed by La Cetra Barockorchester Basel under the baton of Andrea Marcon. This is indeed an orchestra that understands Mozart; the musicians utilize excellent technique and solid musicianship that respects Mozart's phrasing and dynamics. Apollo et Hyacinthus is sweet, light, and almost Baroque in character, as is La finta semplice, therefore these pieces are fitting for a Baroque orchestra.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Die Zauberflöte / The Magic Flute
RIAS Kammerchor / Akademie für alte Musik Berlin / René Jacobs
EAC+LOG+CUE | 3x FLAC: 715 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Harmonia Mundi # HMC 902068.70 | Country/Year: France 2010
Genre: Classical | Style: Vienesse School, Opera

…The greatest pleasure of this sonically vivid recording is the splendid orchestral playing, from the taut brilliance of the overture to the delicate tracery of the strings in the final chorus. Jacobs is more than a musicologist/provacateur, he’s a conductor whose charisma comes across in recordings—just listen to the overtures to any of his Mozart operas or his “Jupiter’ Symphony…

This album of Mozart opera overtures will certainly delight the Mozart fan, as performed by La Cetra Barockorchester Basel under the baton of Andrea Marcon. This is indeed an orchestra that understands Mozart; the musicians utilize excellent technique and solid musicianship that respects Mozart's phrasing and dynamics. Apollo et Hyacinthus is sweet, light, and almost Baroque in character, as is La finta semplice, therefore these pieces are fitting for a Baroque orchestra. La finta semplice feels, one might argue, rather like a chamber piece or a concerto grosso; thus, it is interesting to examine the style of Mozart's overtures and how they vary in character over time. With Mitridate, one hears more of that famed Mozart melodic lyricism, coupled with his playfulness at the end of the piece. Ascanio in Alba is sunny yet majestic at the beginning, and this contrast is carefully performed by La Cetra.

In the famous Preface to Alceste (1767), Christoph Willibald Gluck and his librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi posited a new direction for opera. They spoke of moving beyond Baroque forms, of striving for a new naturalism in opera. They wanted, in Calzabigi's lovely phrase, to liberate the language of the heart. Taken from the height of this Reform period, the arias on this disc reveal composers exploring and experimenting, at struggle and at play, as they create the new forms that bring to opera the noble simplicity of the Classical era.