The.joy.of.mozart

With the belief that “No opera loses so much as Die Zauberflöte if one strips it of its drama and that means, above all, the spoken dialogue,” René Jacobs’ agenda in Die Zauberflöte is to rehabilitate the reputation of Schikaneder’s libretto. At the heart of his reassesment is the idea that Schikaneder and Mozart’s Masonic message is deeper and more carefully presented than we have thought. He suggests that seemingly silly or inconsistent aspects of the story are put there as intentional false paths as the audience, not only the prince and the bird catcher, undergoes its own trials of initiation. The opera’s symbolism and structure are explained in convincing detail in an essay in the booklet by the Egyptologist and Mozart researcher Jan Assman.

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…

Sonatas 7 - 12, composed between 1777 and about 1783, mark a significant evolution with respect to the preceding ones: Mozart’s expressive world now takes on many new facets, and in Sonata K 310 it reaches dramatic depths of unprecedented intensity and sombreness. In the other sonatas, too, although seemingly “lighter”, we find an infinity of expressive approaches that had never previously appeared with such naturalness and variety of inflections. However, Mozart always succeeds in maintaining an admirable balance between seriousness and facetiousness, between playfulness and drama, with constant originality in his management of form.

Musical maverick Martin Fröst’s most ambitious Sony Classical release yet sees him as both clarinetist and conductor, joining soloists Lucas Debargue (piano), Ann Hallenberg (Mezzo-Soprano) and Elin Rombo (Soprano) and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, of which he is chief conductor, in a double-album of masterpieces capturing the paradox of Mozart’s fragile existence and extraordinary creativity.

The artistry of Holliger (b1939) prompted Evelyn Rothwell (Lady Barbirolli) to call him 'The Paganini of the oboe' Holliger's mastery of the oboe ranges over a vast expanse of repertoire, from the baroque to contemporary – Bach to Berio and Zelenka to Zimmermann. His style is notable for its flexibility, agility, integrity and ability to communicate convincingly across the wide range of repertoire he performs. Holliger has done much to champion the oboe music of composers such as Zelenka and Krommer, and has also had over 100 works composed for him by composers including Berio, Carter, Henze, Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Penderecki and Stockhausen.