Mozart Kraus

From the Notes: Both the artists on these discs made their mark early on the musical scene. At the age of 17 Lili Kraus graduated with the highest honours from the Academy of Music in her native Budapest [where Kodály and Bartók had been among her teachers] and went on to study with Schnabel at the Vienna Conservatory, where, only three years later, she was appointed professor. Willi Boskovsky [her junior by four years] at the age of 17 won the Kreisler Prize at the Vienna Academy, where he became professor at 25. He was already a member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, but in 1939, at the early age of 30, he was appointed one of that prestigious body's concertmasters, and remained in that post for 32 years. … Meanwhile Lili Kraus had toured the world in the early 1930's, gaining a considerable reputation as an interpreter of the Viennese classics from Haydn to Schubert….

A pianist whose work transcended time, Lili Kraus was a Hungarian musician with a love for Viennese classics. Kraus made a career from an early age, performing internationally from the age of 18 and becoming a professor at age 20. She was not only a great solo artist, but was a renowned collaborator.

That the four main works on this disc have never been recorded before is no reflection on the quality of the music or the composer. Joseph Martin Kraus, the German-born composer-contemporary of Mozart's working in Sweden, was all but forgotten after his death in 1792 and recordings of his works have been few and far between. And his four Italian cantatas on this disc were nearly completely forgotten after the death of the soprano they were written for in 1790.

Although he was known as the Swedish Mozart, Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792) was actually born in central Germany. Persuaded by a fellow law student to apply for a position in the Swedish court orchestra, he remained in the employ of King Gustav III until his death. Known primarily for his symphonies, he also wrote at least 8 String quartets, including the 4 on this disc.

Kraus' last and greatest works, the Symphonie funebre and Funeral Cantata for Gustav III, are fully able to stand with the best works in the forms of the period, as great as the late symphonies of Haydn and Mozart and, yes, even as great as the Requiem of Mozart. Written under the overwhelming personal and national tragedy of the assassination of the King of Sweden then at the peak of its cultural and national greatness, Kraus' funeral music is numb with shock and wild with grief, but always completely controlled, masterfully balanced, and profoundly moving. If there are only two works you ever listen to by Kraus, let them be these two works.

The assassination of Gustav III, Sweden's "theatre king", ended one of the most brilliant periods in the country's culture. And it was followed by a ceremony fully on a par with the tragic event itself: a kind of heroic opera about the Third of the Gustavs, staged in the royal burial church, Riddarholmskyrkan. Joseph Martin Kraus, the greatest of the Gustavian composers and royal Kapellmeister, conducted his Funeral Cantata. Strongly personal in its despair, wrath, and grief, this highly dramatic creation was the joint work of three of the age's leading minds, in music, poetry and décor.

German by birth and trained in Mannheim by Franz Xaver Richter, Joseph Martin Kraus is often referred to as the ‘Swedish Mozart’ both on the grounds of his undoubted musical genius and his employment at the brilliant court of Gustav III in Stockholm. Kraus’s career as a composer was relatively brief - probably little more than 15 years - but his mature works have a complexity expressive intensity which is quite unique. His death in 1792, like that of Mozart’s the previous year, must be accounted one of the great musical tragedies of the period.