Oehms

Although known almost exclusively for his instrumental concertos and the spurious Adagio attributed to him, Tomaso Albinoni was mainly a man of the theater; he composed 81 operas and, late in life, made his living as a singing coach. However, the best efforts of posterity to catch up with Albinoni's operatic creations are significantly stymied by the fact that only three of his stage works are fully extant, the rest preserved only in occasional and fugitive fragments in the form of single arias and other bits and pieces. "Il Nascimento dell'Aurora" is a serenata – or more specifically, a "festa pastorale" – a kind of courtly entertainment not really meant to be specifically dramatic or compelling and, in this case, dealing with the birth of Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora ….

Although known almost exclusively for his instrumental concertos and the spurious Adagio attributed to him, Tomaso Albinoni was mainly a man of the theater; he composed 81 operas and, late in life, made his living as a singing coach. However, the best efforts of posterity to catch up with Albinoni's operatic creations are significantly stymied by the fact that only three of his stage works are fully extant, the rest preserved only in occasional and fugitive fragments in the form of single arias and other bits and pieces. "Il Nascimento dell'Aurora" is a serenata – or more specifically, a "festa pastorale" – a kind of courtly entertainment not really meant to be specifically dramatic or compelling and, in this case, dealing with the birth of Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora ….

Morton Feldman's late period was characterized by works dedicated to friends, his "For …" pieces. One of the best-known and most frequently performed is the piano piece For Bunita Marcus, who was a composition student of his. The work consists of single notes and short patterns of notes spatially notated, without precise rhythmic values. The effect is of a very leisurely improvisation, using a limited number of pitches, played in apparently random manner over the whole expanse of the keyboard. Listeners expecting a structured musical experience governed by conventional musical logic would probably find the piece infuriatingly scattered and pointless.

It has long been known that William Youn has joined the ranks of the world's leading Mozart and Chopin interpreters. The complete recording of the Mozart piano sonatas, made for the Oehms label by the South Korean pianist based in Munich, is already setting new standards of excellence in their interpretation on the modern grand piano.

Chronological treatments of the early part of Mozart's career have mostly focused on his tours as a child prodigy, his eventful trip to Paris and back, and his rebel years in Salzburg. The two years he spent in Italy in his early teens, traveling and studying with counterpoint teacher Padre Martini, get overlooked. Yet this was the period in which Mozart became Mozart, in which, to use computer parlance, the "defaults" for much of his structural thinking were set in place.

This CD is a live recording of a concert in March 2010, given in the Vienna Konzerthaus. It is particularly attractive due to the outstanding group of soloists, which includes Johan Botha, Jane Henschel and Kwangchoul Young. Bertrand de Billy also proves his ability to ring out the finest, subtlest music-making from even the largest orchestral and choral bodies.