The Mozartists & Ian Page

The Mozartists continue their MOZART 250 project of staging operas by Mozart and his contemporaries with their recording of the UK premiére of Niccolò Jommelli’s Il Vologeso, first performed over 250 years ago on 11 February 1766 for the Stuttgart court in Ludwigsburg.

Like the first two releases in The Mozartists’ ongoing ‘Sturm und Drang’ series, this record- ing comprises three highly dramatic and turbulent orchestral works interspersed with similarly highly-charged vocal items. The repertoire dates from between 1771 and 1788, and again includes one of Haydn’s great minor-key symphonies – this time arguably the greatest of them all, the ‘Trauer’.

Like the first two releases in The Mozartists’ ongoing ‘Sturm und Drang’ series, this record- ing comprises three highly dramatic and turbulent orchestral works interspersed with similarly highly-charged vocal items. The repertoire dates from between 1771 and 1788, and again includes one of Haydn’s great minor-key symphonies – this time arguably the greatest of them all, the ‘Trauer’.

A composer inextricably linked with London’s Covent Garden, Thomas Arne’s greatest opera, Artaxerxes, was premièred at the Theatre Royal, the predecessor of the Royal Opera House, on 2 February 1762 and remained in the Covent Garden repertory until the late 1830s, where it received a documented 111 performances before 1790. The young Mozart almost certainly attended a performance when he came to London in the mid1760s and Haydn was also acquainted with the work, enthusiastically exclaiming that he “had no idea we had such an opera in the English language.”

This is the first project in a seven-volume series exploring the Sturm und Drang movement, which swept through all art forms in the between the early 1760s and 1780s. The purpose of this movement was to frighten and perturb through the use of wild and subjective emotional means of expression.

This 2-CD set presents an unprecedented survey of Mozart’s childhood visit to London in 1764-65. Ian Page conducts his outstanding period-instrument orchestra in a fascinating and wide-ranging programme which includes Mozart’s remarkable first symphony (composed when he was eight years old), along with his two other London symphonies and his first concert aria. The repertoire also explores the music that was being performed in London during Mozart’s stay, including works by J. C. Bach, Thomas Arne, Abel, Pescetti, Perez, George Rush and William Bates, many of which have not previously been recorded, and the large cast of soloists includes eight singers and harpsichordist Steven Devine.