Mozart Trio

This Sony-made 30CD classical music collection covers almost all classical music, from the early Baroque period represented by Bach to the schools of classical music by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms represent romantic, national and even modern musical schools led by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, etc. representative, everything wonderful and vivid.

Boccherini never scaled the heights of his contemporaries Haydn and Mozart, but he was a fluent composer, tuneful, and imaginative in his orchestral scoring. Doubled lower strings in Symphony No. 3 create a deep-pile texture; mandolin/guitar-like pizzicato in the second movement may reflect his employment in Madrid by the Spanish Infante; colourful flutes replace oboes in the minuet (though piercing piccolo solo on this recording is perhaps a quirk too far).

Unquestionably, the clarinet quintets of Mozart and Brahms have earned time-honored and well-deserved places in the repertoire of clarinetists worldwide. In the informative and well-written annotations by Eric Hoeprich, we read that “they embody the maturity, depth, experience, and possibly even a premonition of an otherworldliness soon to be experienced firsthand.”

One of Canada’s most sought-after flautists, Claire Guimond proudly introduces her version of Mozart’s four flute quartets. A most interesting mixture of dreamyness and humour is presented, on what is destined to become a truly important recording. An impeccably engineered product and extremely well performed – totally imbued by the warmth and softeness of Claire Guimond’s baroque flute which has become a real trademark for this outstanding performer.

Through the eighteenth century, the clavichord was a highly favored instrument for personal music making. Musicians loved it because they could play with dynamics (shades of soft to loud) and even voice chords (play each note in the chord with varying amounts of strength to "color" the chord). While the harpsichord was a louder instrument and more suitable for public performance, the strings were plucked and there was no way to play with different dynamics. The artist could change the effects to give the illusion of dynamics, but it was a psychological manipulation. With the clavichord, the force of pressure on the key directly levered the tangent into the string with that same force and that created the dynamic. Musicians treasured its subtlety and responsiveness to even the softest breath of a note.

The Seraphim Trio makes a welcome return to ABC Classics with an album of Beethoven's piano trios. Beethoven's trios are amongst the finest works in the chamber canon, taking the form spawned by Mozart and Haydn and developing it into a musical genre which reached symphonic proportions in its musical language and virtuosity.

Director Alexander Janiczek proves the perfect choice to direct the music of his fellow Austrian as he delivers a superb performance in this, his second, recording with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Ray Still, principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for forty years, was praised by the Chicago Tribune for his “distinctively rich, mellow, singing tone”. He joins Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman and Lynn Harrell in this programme of oboe quartets, with Mozart as the centrepiece.

Multiple Grammy nominee John Di Martino–composer, arranger, pianist–has recorded many albums for Venus Records with his Romantic Jazz Trio. Noted for his versatility, John has performed and recorded with such notables as Kenny Burrell, James Moody, Joe Lovano, David "Fat Head" Newman, Pat Martino, Paquito D'Rivera and Houston Person. John has been described as a "shape-shifter", for his creativity across musical genres.
Here the trio devotes an entire album to jazzing up music by the classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.