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Under the direction of the principal conductor and artistic director of the Salzburg Mozart Week, Mark Minkowski, the Musiciens du Louvre perform on two of Mozart’s original instruments. Mozart’s Violin Concerto and his Piano Concerto in A major are played on instruments that were once in the composer’s possession. Thibault Noally plays the Violin Concerto on a violin from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Dalla Costa and “conjures up Romantic brilliance from the well maintained instrument”, then Francesco Corti brings Mozart’s fortepiano to life again, thereby spreading “collective Mozart happiness all round” (Salzburger Nachrichten).

This highly collectable boxed set assembles all the works which Mozart composed for violin and orchestra, performed by the much-acclaimed violinist Julia Fischer in impeccable readings. The set includes 3 SACDs along with an added DVD which includes previously unreleased video footage of the Mozart recording sessions. All of these Mozart recordings featuring the remarkable young violinist Julia Fischer have been favorably reviewed on this site and elsewhere.

Violinist Arabella Steinbacher studied her first Mozart Violin Concerto in G major at the age of eight. The legendary pianist Arthur Schnabel mentioned that the piano sonatas of Mozart are too easy for children yet too difficult for adults. In Steinbacher’s words: In Mozart one must always make sure that it’s powerful, but at the same time never sounds aggressive and that the sound always remains beautifully pure and almost angelic. And since then the piece has become the underlying theme throughout her career. She played the piece during many important moments of her life. It was also the piece that got Arabella accepted as the youngest students of Ana Chumachenko when she was nine. Yet it never came to a CD recording while listeners regularly ask for it.

Following their critically acclaimed first volume of Mozart’s violin concertos (CHAN 20234), Francesca Dego and Sir Roger Norrington complete the set, once again with outstanding support from a reduced Royal Scottish National Orchestra. This cycle not only represents the first time Sir Roger has recorded these concertos, but the present album is also his final recording project. All five concertos were written before Mozart was twenty; nevertheless, his rapid development as a composer is evident in the progression from the first to the fifth, which has an unusual Adagio section within the first movement, an extensive slow movement, and of course the extensive ‘Turkish’ episode in the final movement (probably based on Hungarian folk music). Whilst given on modern instruments with metal strings, these are performances immersed in Norrington’s lifetime of experience in period performance practise. As The Sunday Times noted of the first album: ‘Pairing the veteran Mozartian Norrington – a pioneer of historical performance practice – with the young Italian-American soloist Dego proves inspiring in what promises to be one of the freshest of recent cycles of the Mozart concertos.’