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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Complete Piano Concertos Vol. 1
English Chamber Orchestra / Daniel Barenboim, Piano & Direction
4xCD | EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 1,08 GB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: EMI "DRM" # CZS 7 62825 2 | Country/Year: Germany 1989
Genre: Classical | Style: Viennese School, Piano

In the 1960s, while still in his twenties, Daniel Barenboim joined forces with the English Chamber Orchestra to record a groundbreaking set of the complete Mozart Piano Concertos, conducting from the keyboard. Later, he recorded them again with the Berlin Philharmonic, but the English Chamber Orchestra version still has the edge for its bite and beauty, operatic mellifluousness offset by apparently boundless energy and an atmosphere of inspired and intimate music-making from start to finish. Barenboim brings us Mozart in all his many guises, from enfant terrible to founding father and, ultimately, avatar in the term’s original sense.

Bright, stylish, and lovely, Pamela Frank's recordings of Mozart's five Violin Concertos with David Zinman conducting the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra are surely among the best since Arthur Grumiaux's classic recordings with Colin Davis and the London Symphony of half a century ago. Frank's tone is lean but supple, her intonation is warm but pure, and her technique is second to none. Better yet, Frank's interpretations are ideally balanced between controlled intensity and singing expressivity, the balance that is the essence of Mozart's art. Zinman's accompaniments are themselves ideally balanced between supporting Frank and challenging her.

Jean-Pierre Rampal is often considered the greatest flutist of the modern era. In addition to his exceptional talent, he raised the flute to unprecedented solo status, popularizing the flute literature, the flute recital and flute recordings. The rediscovery of the Baroque, Classical and Romantic repertoire for the flute is one of his outstanding achievements, as well as his numerous collaborations with composers; over 100 works have been written for and premiered by him.

This ninth volume in the Next Generation Mozart Soloists series brings together four young soloists under conductor Howard Griffiths and reveals the sheer breadth of Mozart’s creativity. Mozart most probably heard a sinfonia concertante — a work in which a group of solo instruments embarks on a dialogue with orchestra — for the first time in Paris in 1778. He composed such a work for violin, viola, and orchestra the following year: the Sinfonia concertante KV 364. It is recorded here by Johan Dalene and Eivind Ringstad, who are full of praise for how Mozart gave the viola equal footing with the violin.