Mozart Perahia 27

In recognition of his 40th anniversary with the label, Sony Classical is proud to present Murray Perahia: The First 40 Years. This limited- edition box set includes the artist’s complete recordings for Sony Classical on 68 CDs packaged in mini sleeves featuring the original album cover artwork.

This lavish box set contains a whopping 68 discs, a hardcover book, and five DVDs; in short, it's Murray Perahia's entire recorded career through 2010. Although the title says "The First 40 Years," the final disc in the set is a Vox Turnabout disc of Mozart chamber music that Perahia recorded with Boris Kroyt and Harold Wright in 1967, but not released until 1976. Chamber music is not something Perahia is usually known for, nor is vocal music.

These two concertos are glorious, with melodies to sweep you off your feet and fall in love with them. Concerto # 20 is powerful, and has an exquisite second movement "Romance". One of the two most frequently performed of Mozart's piano concertos (the other being # 21, with its "Elvira Madigan" slow movement), it is what the liner notes call "the most Beethovenian" of the concertos, pointing the way to 19th cent. music. Mozart did not write any cadenzas for this piece, and Perahia plays one written by Beethoven in the opening Allegro, and dazzles us with one he composed himself in the third movement.

Recorded over 13 years between 1975 and 1988, Murray Perahia's cycle of the complete piano concertos of Mozart, including the concert rondos and double concertos, remains perhaps the most enduring monument to his art. What is it about Perahia's art, some skeptics might ask, that is worth enduring? For one thing, as this 12-disc set amply demonstrates, there is his incredible tone.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No 21 in C major, K. 467
The Chamber Orchestra of Europe / Murray Perahia
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 226 MB | Full Artwork: 73 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Sony Classical # SK 46 485 | Country/Year: Europe 1991
Genre: Classical | Style: Viennese School, Piano

"In keeping with the Piano Concerto in D Minor, K. 466, the C Major Concerto was composed for the series of Lenten subscription concerts given by Mozart in 1765. This was an extraordinarily busy and successful period of Mozart's life, as we can gauge from a series of letters sent by his father Leopold to Mozart's sister Nannerl, now married and living with her husband in St. Gilgen. "Every day there are concerts; and the whole time is given up to teaching, music, composing and so forth…It is impossible for me to describe the rush and the bustle."…"

Recorded over 13 years between 1975 and 1988, Murray Perahia's cycle of the complete piano concertos of Mozart, including the concert rondos and double concertos, remains perhaps the most enduring monument to his art. What is it about Perahia's art, some skeptics might ask, that is worth enduring? For one thing, as this 12-disc set amply demonstrates, there is his incredible tone. Clear as a bell, bright as the sky, and deep as the ocean, Perahia's tone is not only one of the wonders of the age, it's admirably suited to the pellucid loveliness of Mozart's music.

Perahia’s immaculate technique, stylistic surety, and classical symmetry are remarkably consistent. While his tone is always singing and rounded, lyrical melodies and decorative passages alike convey a slight diamond-like edge to the peak of crescendos or an emphatic accent. This helps achieve an attractive fusion of unruffled poise and dramatic tension. You hear this quite readily in the B-flat K. 456 concerto ‘s first movement, or in the carefully pedaled trills and restatement of the main theme in K. 595’s heavenly Larghetto, also sampled here. Perahia’s symbiotic musical rapport with Radu Lupu in the two-piano concerto and the two-piano version of the concerto for three pianos should not go unmentioned.

– Jed Distler

In a field in which each season heralds the arrival of new "talents" who are soon forgotten, pianist Murray Perahia has remained a reliable and immensely gifted presence on the international scene for more than four decades, despite long breaks away from performing. Perahia studied with Jeanette Haien, from the age of five until well into his teens.