Scottish Chamber Orchestra

The multi-award-winning partnership of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Sir Charles Mackerras is reunited in this second collection of Mozart Symphonies featuring Nos. 29, 31 ('Paris'), 32, 35 ('Haffner') & 36 ('Linz'). This much anticipated recording follows on from the astounding success of Mozart: Symphonies 38-41 which resulted in Mackerras and the SCO winning the Critics' Award at the 2009 BRIT Awards and led to Mozart: Symphonies 38-41 being named 'Disc of the Year' at the 2009 BBC Music Magazine Awards.

This is the second fine Don Giovanni we have had within the past year. Like Gardiner (Archiv), Mackerras includes every note Mozart wrote for both the original Prague version and the Viennese revival. Moreover, it is easier than ever for listeners to ‘programme in’ their preferred version: all Prague die-hards have to do is to bypass Don Ottavio’s ‘Dalla sua pace’ in Act I – a beautiful aria, in all conscience, though it holds up the dramatic action at a crucial stage. By coaxing a modern orchestra into a real awareness of period style, Mackerras seems to have the best of both worlds: the playing has admirable liveliness and intensity, and there are none of the intonation problems that so often plague actual period instruments.

This recording of Così fan tutte was made when the cast was preparing for performances at the 1993 Edinburgh Festival, so the cast had the advantage of enough rehearsal time together to relax into the opera's humor. Their easy rapport is most evident in the spirited recitatives, which sparkle with spontaneity and wit. The fact that the principals are talented comedians makes their unforced interactions genuinely fun, and they sound like they are thoroughly enjoying themselves. Although they are not all international superstars, the performances are stellar. The soloists bring out the humanity and complexity of the opera, and artfully convey their characters' emotional development.

In his debut recording with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra oboist François Leleux celebrates his dual roles of conductor and soloist as he directs performances of Bizet and Gounod.

The Starlight Express was adapted from a book by Algernon Blackwood, A Prisoner in Fairyland, for a theatre production in the West End during the First World War, with music by Sir Edward Elgar. Combining the usually contrasting elements of fairytale and melodrama, The Starlight Express depicts the fantasy world inhabited by a group of children, who possess a magical ‘starlight’ quality that has been lost by the adults around them. This is the most comprehensive recorded version of The Starlight Express to date, based on a new score prepared by the Elgar Edition, which has been adapted by the conductor Sir Andrew Davis.

John Field was a pupil of Muzio Clementi and a precursor to Chopin's style of piano playing (Chopin modelled his nocturnes on those by Field). In his concertos, Field combines virtuosity with incredible lyricism. While Beethoven was writing concertos that could very well be called symphonies with piano obbligato (in fact, that is precisely what ETA Hoffman called the concertos of Beethoven and Mozart), Field was striking out in an entirely different direction. More a poet than anything else, Field's concertos sound almost improvisational, with the composer going wherever the piano seems to take him.