Giovanni Ioro

The eagerly awaited release of Don Giovanni represents the culmination of the critically acclaimed cycle of Mozart's Da Ponte operas from the charismatic conductor Teodor Currentzis and MusicAeterna, the orchestra and choir he founded in Siberia.

Italian cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima (born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1962) is regarded by many as a post-minimalist, and indeed one hears in some of his compositions the rigorous and formalistic elements of other composers who built upon the foundations of Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

The most prestigious cast in the history of opera recordings?

Recorded in 1958, this Don Giovanni’s prime attraction is Ferenc Fricsay’s crisp, forward-moving conducting. The tempos are swift, almost as though Fricsay can’t wait to damn the Don, a scene done with the requisite sense of fatal drama. It’s an approach that might have worked better with a cast more alive to the ambiguities of the text and music; this is, after all a “Dramma giocoso”. Balancing those two elements is always a challenge, but there’s precious little “giocoso” here.

The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, are probably the most renowned work of the baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach and one of the highest compositional "peaks" ever reached in the musical art.

Fritz Busch was one the greatest German conductors of the first half of the twentieth century, noted for his illuminating performances and his ethical principles. His father was a former itinerant musician who became an instrument maker, and his brothers were violinist Adolf Busch and cellist Hermann Busch. Fritz Busch went to Cologne Conservatory in 1909, studying conducting with Steinbach. The city of Aachen hired him as music director in 1912.

Fritz Busch studierte bei Fritz Steinbach in Köln. Mit 19 Jahren wurde er Kapellmeister in Riga, anschließend in Bad Pyrmont und in Gotha.

Here is the third and last instalment in the ‘Live at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées’ series of Mozart operas conducted by Jérémie Rhorer. After Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail and La clemenza di Tito comes Don Giovanni, recorded in 2016. On the occasion of the performances (directed by Stéphane Braunschweig) during which Radio France recorded the present discs, Le Figaro wrote: ‘Jérémie Rhorer expertly conducted his orchestra “Le Cercle de l’Harmonie”.

Here is the third and last instalment in the ‘Live at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées’ series of Mozart operas conducted by Jérémie Rhorer. After Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail and La clemenza di Tito comes Don Giovanni, recorded in 2016. On the occasion of the performances (directed by Stéphane Braunschweig) during which Radio France recorded the present discs, Le Figaro wrote: ‘Jérémie Rhorer expertly conducted his orchestra “Le Cercle de l’Harmonie”.

Warner Classics presents a timeless masterpiece with this rendition of Mozart's Don Giovanni, K. 527, featuring the incomparable Otto Klemperer leading the New Philharmonia Orchestra.