Manchester Camerata

Volume 7 of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s Mozart piano concertos survey with Gábor Takács-Nagy and the Manchester Camerata features two of the late concertos – Nos 24 and 25 – along with a spirited reading of the Overture to Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). Concerto No. 24 was written whilst Mozart was busily composing Le nozze di Figaro, between October 1785 and the première, in Vienna, in May 1786.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s acclaimed series of piano concertos by Mozart reaches its fifth instalment. Concertos Nos 5, 6, 8, and 9 are complemented by the overtures to Il sogno di Scipione, Lucio Silla, La finta giardiniera, Il re pastore, and Zaide. That all of these works were composed by Mozart between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five serves as a vivid reminder of his unique talents as a child prodigy: these are not childhood efforts but mature works. The Fifth Concerto was actually Mozart’s first, as Nos 1 – 4 are arrangements of works by other composers. As in the previous volumes, Bavouzet is partnered by Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, all recorded in The Stoller Hall in Manchester.

Robin Walker began his musical life as Head Chorister at York Minster then studied under David Lumsdaine at Durham and Anthony Milner at the Royal College of Music. His early work was seriously modernist but since the 1980s he has worked on an ‘instinctual’ approach involving a relationship with Nature, a sense of Place and our position within it, even including ‘folk-style’ elements – also to some extent informed by studying the music and dance of India.

The music on this EP inhabits a particular corner of the bounteous repertory of characteristic pieces for violin and piano. Short without being slight, these miniatures are vibrant and emotive, getting to the heart of the matter with freshness and originality, and sharing a rich yet restrained harmonic language which is identifiably English in character.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s acclaimed series of piano concertos by Mozart reaches its fifth instalment. Concertos Nos 5, 6, 8, and 9 are complemented by the overtures to Il sogno di Scipione, Lucio Silla, La finta giardiniera, Il re pastore, and Zaide. That all of these works were composed by Mozart between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five serves as a vivid reminder of his unique talents as a child prodigy: these are not childhood efforts but mature works. The Fifth Concerto was actually Mozart’s first, as Nos 1 – 4 are arrangements of works by other composers. As in the previous volumes, Bavouzet is partnered by Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, all recorded in The Stoller Hall in Manchester.

This third volume in the series from the electrifying combination of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Manchester Camerata under Gabor Takacs-Nagy explores the final two of the six piano concertos of the year 1784, on which Mozart staked his reputation as both a performer and composer. Alongside these works features the pioneering Quintet for Piano and Winds, also from 1784, the first written for this combination of instruments and a work which Mozart regarded as his finest to date. The consecutive Kochel numbers of the three piano works hint at a remarkable story: not only were they all written in the same extraordinarily productive year, but all were completed in the same month, March, when Mozart was just twenty-eight years old. The two concertos form a pair, and in letters to his father Mozart makes it clear that he wrote them for his own performance: Nobody but I owns these new concertos in B flat and D, adding in another letter, two weeks later, I consider them both to be concertos which make one sweat. Heard in this context, Bavouzets playing is all the more astonishing.