Mozart i Music

Bezuidenhout plays Mozart on the fortepiano like no-one else. Here he performs an assortment of solo works with all the sensitivity, expressivity, flair and stylistic integrity that has marked him out as a supreme master of the early keyboard…and the genius of Mozart is brilliantly and eloquently served.

Fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout continues his multi-disc survey of Mozart's music for solo keyboard with volume seven of the series. The first six have been met with the universal critical acclaim from around the world. This program of this release explores the elegance and drama that are ever-present in Mozart's music. Most notably, Bezuidenhout performs two works influenced by the composer's 1778 stay in Paris - the grandly proportioned Sonata in A minor, K.310 and the dazzling Variations in C on ''Lison dormait'' K.264.

While its unpretentious cover photo and small text don't proclaim it as an important recording, Noriko Ogawa's 2012 SACD of Mozart piano sonatas is the kind of sleeper album that quietly asserts its value and convinces purely through the beauty of the music. The three piano sonatas presented here also have that kind of unassuming quality. Mozart composed them as teaching pieces, suitable for players of modest skills, yet they have become extremely popular and rank among his best loved works. Ogawa plays them with a light touch that suits their simplicity, and her interpretations of K. 330, K. 331 (famous for its Rondo alla Turca), and K. 332 are transparent and almost naïve, but for the subtlety of attack, balanced phrasing, and shaded dynamics that reveal her artistry. BIS provides nearly ideal sound quality for Ogawa, offering clean reproduction and reasonably close microphone placement that make listening effortless.

Universally famous for his glorious overtures Light Cavalry and Poet and Peasant (Naxos 8.553935), Franz von Suppé was one of the greatest exponents of the golden Age of Viennese Operetta. But he was also a master of incidental music for popular plays, one of which is Mozart – an example of Künstler-Lebensbild (‘life portrait of an artist’). Suppé’s music subtly accompanies the stage action as the story of the composition of Mozart’s music unfolds, offering a potpourri of Mozart’s works served up with Suppé’s trademark flair. Die Afrikareise presents a piquant and brilliant travelogue.

The title of this exceptional disc, "Night Music", should not be taken to mean that the performances are in any way dark, mysterious, droopy, sluggish, or otherwise conventionally "nocturnal". Rather, the term evokes its 18th century musical meaning: a time for fun, relaxation, parties, entertainment both indoors and out, and of course, romance. Indeed, "Romantic" is perhaps the best way to describe these virtuosic, impulsive, and extravagantly expressive performances by the inimitable Andrew Manze and his team of crack "authentic-instrument" players.

All things Mozart have been said and done, you’d think. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. On a daily basis new findings are added to the research portfolio, not only with regards to the famous Salzburgian’s life – hasn’t that been dissected to death? – but also about each and every one of his compositions, continuously getting reframed, analyzed and compared. The exegesis of the Mozartverse is a full-time job to many. The works on this recording alone raise a bunch of questions of which several remain unanswered.

One old-school Mozart maestro who would have nothing to do with modern notions of Classical ''authenticity'' is Carlo Maria Giulini, a great conductor who has made a specialty of Mozart`s music throughout his long career, which spanned some 23 seasons in Chicago. Giulini`s second recording of the unfinished Requiem Mass-his second with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, even more attentive to his musical desires this time around-must be the slowest ever recorded. As such it is characteristic of the late Giulini manner: The reading is suffused by an ultra-serene religiosity that obeys no rules of performance style other than its own.