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SaleMozart: Violin Concerto No. 3, Symphony 'Jupiter', Le nozze di Figaro Overture / Chauvin, Le Concert de la Loge
Alpha · Oct 2021CD$20.99$15.99 -
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Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 39 & 41 / Nikolic, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra
TACET Musikproduktion · Jun 2021SACD$26.99 -
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Mozart: Symphonies nos. 39, 40, and 41 / Manacorda, Kammerakademie Potsdam
Sony Masterworks · Sep 2021CD$16.98 -
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Mozart: 45 Symphonies / Adam Fischer, Danish National Chamber Orchestra
Dacapo Classical · Jan 2014CD$53.99 -
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Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 39, 40 & 41 / Blomstedt, BRSO
For today’s musicologists, performers and concert-going audiences, Mozart’s final symphonies are still a veritable miracle. Why they were written remains a mystery, and no-one knows whether Mozart ever heard them performed during his lifetime. One thing is certain: Mozart created three individual, distinctive and unique works here, which complement each other despite their extreme diversity. The symphonies in E Major, K 543 (no. 39), G minor, K. 550 (no. 40), and C Major, K. 551 (no. 41, also known as “The Jupiter”) are the ones that most represent Mozart’s symphonic legacy to later generations of musicians. With its slow introduction, the Symphony in E flat major also opens the entire cycle, already giving the listener a sense of its highs and lows. As early as 1800, the popular "Great" G minor Symphony was praised as the “painting of a passion-stricken soul”. Like its big sister, the "Jupiter" Symphony in C Major, it numbers among the most-played works in classical music and has been immortalized in countless recordings. Nevertheless, these symphonies - probably the most profound ones before Beethoven - reveal themselves as something quite new in every interpretation.
"Mozart placed all the dark sides of human existence into his G minor Symphony", says Herbert Blomstedt, adding that its “passion” continues to fascinate him. The eminent Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt, a close associate and regular guest conductor of the BRSO, conducted the E Major Symphony on December 18 and 19, 2019 in the Philharmonie at the Munich Gasteig, the G minor Symphony in concerts on January 31 and February 1, 2013 and the "Jupiter" Symphony on December 21 and 22, 2017 in the Herkulessaal of Munich’s Residenz. The new 2-CD set from BR-KLASSIK now presents these great cornerstones of Mozart's symphonic oeuvre –in the very best sound quality.
Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 3, Symphony 'Jupiter', Le nozze di Figaro Overture / Chauvin, Le Concert de la Loge
Julien Chauvin and Le Concert de la Loge join Alpha and launch a new cycle devoted to Mozart. This project is a natural continuation of Julien Chauvin’s work of rediscovery focusing on the interpretation of the music of Haydn and his contemporaries in Paris in the late eighteenth century. The first recording assembles the majestic and grandiose Symphony no.41 in C major, known as the Jupiter, the Violin Concerto no.3 in G major and the Overture to Le nozze di Figaro. Julien Chauvin is, of course, the soloist in the violin concerto and, with his Concert de la Loge (which is no longer ‘Olympique’, since the French National Olympic Sports Committee forced the ensemble to amputate its name in 2016, despite the fact that it dates from...1782), they embark on a Mozartian marathon that promises to be electrifying!
Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 39 & 41 / Nikolic, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra
There is a new recording of Mozart opus KV 551 and KV 543! Some reviewers shake their heads. "Yet another one!". Fortunately, these two are so devilishly good that centuries after their creation they still knock people who have an antenna for it off their feet. Wait a minute, antennas, did they exist back then? Silly? Yeah, silly. Who would say that Mozart wasn't occasionally silly? And bold, cheeky! The way he throws down the last movement of the Jupiter symphony like a gauntlet at the feet of his contemporaries is inimitable. Unfortunately, you can't see it on this album when the bassoons and cellos laugh up their sleeves, but you can hear it all the better. What contrasts! After the bright beginning with timpani and trumpets, the second movement comes from a completely different world. "Con sordino", seductively and gently Gordan Nikolic and the girls and guys of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra caress the ears. And so it goes on and on. Same with the E flat major symphony. Yes, but aren't there already many wonderful recordings of these works? Yes there are. But as is the case with Mozart, the most famous interpreters can fail and the least known can hit the mark. Decide yourself.
Mozart: Symphonies nos. 39, 40, and 41 / Manacorda, Kammerakademie Potsdam
With his recordings for Sony Classical and outstanding engagements in the operatic world, Antonello Manacorda has become one of the most interesting conductors of our time. The Sony Classical recordings of the complete Schubert symphonies with Kammerakademie Potsdam have received numerous prizes and are considered reference recordings. The Mendelssohn symphonies with this ensemble were also enthusiastically praised: "Great phrasing, rousing Romantic élan and a well-balanced plasticity of the overall sound [...] Manacorda and the Potsdam Chamber Academy know exactly how to use listening alternatives offers without going too far or even relying on the pure effect. [...] Here you can tell what a pleasure it gave them to play this music. " (Rondo)
Antonello Manacorda is a recognized Mozart expert, especially in the opera world, and so it stands to reason that the new album also presents an exciting corner of Mozart's output: his last three symphonies (1756-1791). Symphonies 39, 40 and 41 were all written in the summer of 1788 and completed in just two months. Mozart completed the Symphony in E-flat major KV 543 (No. 39) on June 26th, followed by the G minor symphony KV 550 (No. 40) on July 25th, and the famous "Jupiter" Symphony in C major KV 551 (No. 41) on August 10th. Many believe that Mozart conceived of these three as a unit; this recording presents them as such.
Festival - Classical Music in Switzerland
Traditionally, Switzerland has an important and impressive heritage regarding festivals for classical music, among them the famous Lucerne Festival, rooting back to the so-called "Concert de Gala" in the gardens of Richard Wagner's villa at Tribschen in 1938 conducted by Arturo Toscanini. This release features the fascinating variety and the many facets of the classical festival scene in Switzerland. The selection of the works takes the importance of big names and well known works into account, but also presents modern or even avant-garde approaches or less well known chamber music works.
The world’s leading orchestras, conductors and soloists, outstanding concert venues like the KKL Culture and Convention Centre by the renowned architect Jean Nouvel in Lucerne, a breathtaking landscape: there are many reasons for falling in love with the Swiss music festivals. The Swiss festivals now draw more than 500,000 classical music enthusiasts to the shores of Lake Lucerne or the Verbier mountains every year. And the numbers of visitors is growing from year to year. With this release, you will understand why.
CONTENTS:
DISC 1:
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37
Francesco Piemontesi, piano
Chamber Orchestra of Europe / Roger Norrington, conductor
Mozart: Symphony No. 39 in E-Flat Major, K. 543
Francesco Piemontesi, piano
Le Cercle de L'Harmonie / Jérémie Rhorer, conductor
DISC 2:
Mozart: Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550
Mozart: Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551, "Jupiter"
Le Cercle de L'Harmonie / Jérémie Rhorer, conductor
DISC 3:
Elgar: Introduction and Allegro, Op. 47
Schumann Quartett
CHAARTS Chamber Artists
Felix Froschhammer, concert master
Kancheli: Chiaroscuro for Violin and Orchestra
Sebastian Bohren, violin
CHAARTS Chamber Artists
Andreas Fleck, conductor
Schumann:
Dein Angesicht, Op. 127 No. 2
Lehn' deine Wang' an meine Wang', Op. 142 No. 2
Es leuchtet meine Liebe, Op. 127 No. 3
Mein Wagen rollet langsam, Op. 142 No. 4
Ian Bostridge, tenor
Saskia Giorgini, piano
Ralph Vaughan Williams: On Wenlock Edge: V. Bredon Hill
Ian Bostridge, tenor
Casal Quartett
Purcell: The Fairy Queen, Z. 629: O Let Me Weep
Regula Mühlemann, soprano
Robin Müller, violin
CHAARTS Chamber Artists
DISC 4:
Brahms: Piano Trio No.1, Op. 8
Jonian-Ilias Kadesha, violin
Vashti Hunter, cello
Joonas Ahonen, piano
Blum: Luzerner Kreisel
Silke Gäng, mezzo-soprano
Oliwia Grabowska, piano
Gesualdo: Madrigals, Libro 6: II. Beltà poi che t'assenti
Davos Festival Kammerchor
Dalbavie: Palimpseste für Flöte, Klarinette, Violine, Viola, Violoncello und Klavier
Àgnes Vass, flute
Joonas Ahonen, piano
Dickkopf: Paris
Davos Festival Männerchor
DISC 5:
Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61
Lily Francis, violin
Festival Orchestra / Willem de Bordes, conductor
Enescu: Romanian Rhapsodies, Op. 11: No. 1 in A Major
Jonian-Ilias Kadesha, violin
Festival Orchestra / Daniel Bard, concert master
DISC 6:
Beethoven: Piano Trio No. 5 in D Major, Op. 70 No. 1 "Ghost"
Candida Thompson, violin
Xenia Jankovic, cello
Paolo Giacometti, piano
Enescu: Octet in C Major, Op. 7
Daniel Bard, violin
DISC 7:
Bach: Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 227
Britten: Hymn to St. Caecilia
Gabrieli Consort & Players
Paul McCreesh, conductor
DISC 8:
Mozart: Requiem in D Minor, K. 626
Elgar: They Are at Rest
Gabrieli Consort & Players
Paul McCreesh, conductor
DISC 9:
Haydn: Symphony No. 6 in D Major, Hob. I:6 "Le Matin"
CHAARTS Chamber Artists
Gregory Ahss, concert master
Sollima: Fecit Neap 17
Giovanni Sollima, cello
CHAARTS Chamber Artists
Gregory Ahss, concert master
Schönberg: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4
Felix Froschhammer, violin
Gregory Ahss, violin
Lawrence Power, viola
Razvan Popovici, viola
Maximilian Hornung, cello
Andreas Fleck, cello
DISC 10:
Webern: Sechs Stücke für großes Orchester, Op. 6
Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy / Susanna Mälkki, conductor
Neuwirth: Trurliade - Zone Zero
Victor Hanna, percussion
Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy / Susanna Mälkki, conductor
Rihm: Gruss-Moment für Pierre Boulez
Ligeti: San Francisco Polyphony
Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy / Matthias Pintscher, conductor
DISC 11:
Shostakovich: From Jewish Folk Poetry, Op. 79
Shostakovich: Cello Sonata in D Minor, Op 40
Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 19
Bloch: From Jewish Life, IEB 6
Sol Gabetta, violin
Bertrand Chamayou, piano
DISC 12:
Mahler: Symphony No. 5
UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra / James Levine, conductor
DISC 13:
Bach: Concerto for 4 Keyboards in A Minor, BWV 1065
Martha Argerich, piano
Evgeny Kissin, piano
James Levine, piano
Mikhail Pletnev, piano
Haydn: Symphony No. 88 in G Major, Hob. I:88
Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra / András Schiff, conductor
Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 19
Lynn Harrell, cello
Yuja Wang, piano
Ysaye: Sonata for 2 Violins in A Minor, Op. posth.
Joshua Bell, violin
Leonidas Kavakos, violin
Mozart: 45 Symphonies / Adam Fischer, Danish National Chamber Orchestra
MOZART Symphonies Nos. 1, 4–31, 33–36, 39–41. Symphonies, K 19a, 42a, 45a–b, 73l–n, 73q, 111b • Ádám Fischer, cond; Danish Natl CO • DACAPO 8.201201 (12 CDs: 716:42)
I mentioned in my review of a single disc from this series, which included symphonies Nos. 28–30 (Fanfare 34:4), that I didn’t think that Ádám Fischer’s performances captured “Mozart’s drama as well as they capture his elegance,” but added the caveat that it’s difficult to gauge an entire series of symphonies by one CD. Alas, in later reviewing the disc including symphonies Nos. 31, 33, and 34, I had the opposite feeling, that Fischer was making a “race to the finish line” and playing the symphonies too quickly. Now, as it so happened, I reviewed those two discs about two years apart, and so did not have the first still on hand to compare to the second, or to think about the differences in approach. But now I have the full set of 45 symphonies to review, and my feelings have changed. Now I am inclined to agree with Patrick Rucker, who gave a rave review to the single disc of symphonies Nos. 15–18 in Fanfare 31:1 (a disc reviewed, I believe, before I joined the magazine staff), stating that he was “grasping for superlatives.”
The difference? Listening to the entire series in chronological sequence. By doing so, I noted that, despite an overall theatrical approach to these symphonies (in the liner notes, Fischer admits that he tends to think of orchestral music “operatically,” i.e., finding a dramatic theme or thread in the music that he then tries to bring out), he does make distinctions between the earlier and the later symphonies. Reducing his approach to a few basics, he plays the earlier symphonies with equal drama and electricity but with far fewer changes in dynamics and fewer rubato touches. In addition, I was able to download the scores of four of the symphonies—two of the most famous late works (40 and 41) and two early symphonies (Nos. 5 and 15, chosen pretty much at random)—and although these are not up-to-date, verified, Urtext scores like the ones Fischer worked from, they do include dynamics markings. And, as any number of conductors of the past have mentioned, they do not tell you what to do between the forte here and the piano four or six bars later (or vice versa). You are expected to follow your own good taste in approaching them.
Perhaps another deciding factor for me was in hearing Philippe Herreweghe’s more dynamic performances of symphonies Nos. 39 and 41 and, believe it or not, Bruno Walter’s historic performances of symphonies Nos. 39–41. Despite Walter’s slower tempos (and richer string sound), he actually elicited much more nuance and detail from those symphonies than did Jaap ter Linden, whose set I gave a good review to and suggested at the time that it was a fine historically-informed set of the Mozart symphonies. But, to be honest, what really sold me on Fischer’s approach were his performances of the early, lesser-known, oft-neglected, and unnumbered symphonies. Each and every one of them sounded as if it was just bursting with excitement, yet not too much that it overpowered the music on the printed page.
Moreover, what struck me in the single disc of symphonies 31, 33 and 34 as too fast now, suddenly, made sense in context. And, for the several Toscanini-bashers out there, I found it almost comical to note that Fischer takes the Finale of the “Jupiter” Symphony at virtually the same tempo that they consider “too fast.” The difference, of course, is that musicians of the 1940s and 50s weren’t used to playing Mozart this swiftly, and so they tended to sound pressed, whereas Fischer’s Danish National Chamber Orchestra skips through the music deftly and nimbly, like snow rabbits dashing across the landscape. It’s the comfort level of the executants that makes the difference, then, not the “wrong” tempo.
A good example of Fischer’s approach is CD 3, where he presents no less that four symphonies in a row that are all in the key of D Major (K 73l, m, n, and q). It would have been very easy for him, and the orchestra, to simply slip into an all-purpose style for these works, which of course would make them sound pretty much the same, yet he continually varies his approach from work to work. I do, however, caution the listener to approach this set one CD at a time. That is what I did, listening on consecutive nights to only one CD per evening, and it worked out pretty well. You get a better feel for the magnitude of Fischer’s achievement that way, and you are being fairer to both him and the Danish orchestra, whose players helped prod him on to take chances with the music and do things differently from the norm. After all, this was a seven-year project for them. These symphonies did not just get all rehearsed and recorded within a year or two.
I should also point out the work that went into Symphony No. 15, one of the four I obtained scores of. In the notes, Fischer asserts that if this work had not been by Mozart, who wrote so many symphonies and so many of good quality, it would probably be a much better known work, possibly a repertoire staple. Just reading the score, the music does look promising but certainly not brilliant. The first movement, for instance, is in a quick 3/4 time, featuring a jagged melody with the usual wide-ranging melodic leaps. From the first bar, the dynamics marking is forte, which changes to piano at bar 13, then back to forte at bar 22, piano again at bar 25, forte on the first beat of bar 30 with a sudden fp on the second beat (a half note played by the oboes, trumpets, and first violins, while the second violins play 16ths and the violas, cellos, and basses play eighth notes). It’s all pretty cut-and-dry, you might say, and this is how most conductors play it. Fischer adds a little burst of extra volume at the top of bar 5, when the agitated strings play against long-held notes by oboes and trumpets, and there are all sorts of little gradations of sound in various places, including slight crescendos to emphasize the musical drama. More interestingly, none of this sounds particularly fussy; if you didn’t have the score in front of you, or if you hadn’t heard any number of flat-response historically-informed performances, you’d think that this is simply the way the music goes. Toscanini once said it isn’t the f here or the p there that’s difficult to gauge, but what to do in between. Sadly, Toscanini paid little attention to most of Mozart’s symphonies because, except for the last three, he found most of them boring: “Is always beautiful, but always the same!” In Fischer’s performances, nothing is “always the same.” In the Andante of this Symphony, for instance, there are no dynamics markings at all, yet Fischer plays it at a moderate mp with further gradations down to p or pp and back again. By such means does he create and sustain interest.
The notes also explain the reason why the music sounds so vibrant and alive: His string players all use steel strings, which gives the music a consistently “edgy” quality that reveals, as Fischer put it, Mozart’s “earthily honest side.” The more you think about it, the more this makes sense, since Mozart was strongly influenced by both Haydn and C. P. E. Bach, both of whom exploited an earthy, dramatic quality in their symphonies.
Probably the most difficult aspect of the earlier symphonies to overcome was the monotony of orchestration. Clarinets, horns, and other instruments only begin to appear in Mozart’s symphonies later on; earlier, the composer had to rely on his ingenuity of counter-rhythms and occasional harmonic changes to sustain interest, and unlike Haydn, Mozart almost invariably sought the widest possible popularity for his music (perhaps one of the reasons why Toscanini found it “always the same”). Yet, as the notes also point out, in Mozart’s day no one bothered to listen to music more than three years old as a rule. It was all about what was new, not what had come before. No one gave a hoot back then about “historical performance practice” because they didn’t want it and wouldn’t have listened if you gave it to them.
I still feel that occasional movements, such as the Andantes of the “Paris” Symphony and No. 39, are a shade too fast for my taste, but in the context of Fischer’s overall musical conception what he plays works very well. I can now accept what I hear in those later symphonies because my tolerance was built up through what he did with the numerous early works. In short, I have taken this symphonic journey with Fischer, the only difference being that I did it in 12 nights rather than in seven years.
I have now replaced the Jaap ter Linden set of Mozart symphonies on my shelf with this one. I strongly urge you to give them a listen and see if you don’t agree.
FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley
Mozart: Symphonies 39 & 41 / Gardiner, English Baroque Soloists
Symphonies 39 & 41 are among the last composed by Mozart. They use the full eighteenth-century orchestra, complete with trumpets and timpani.
Symphony 39 (K543) shows Mozart at his most exalted in the orchestral passages, while some passages remain intimate and touching, with more delicate themes. The Minuet features the orchestra’s guest artists, the clarinets, in a waltz-like Trio.
The “Jupiter”, Mozart’s final symphony (no 41, K551), belongs to a sequence of grand ceremonial works in C major. Typically for Mozart it juxtaposes a number of different contrasting musical characters and ideas, from the formal and aristocratic to the heartfelt and soulful.
In the finale, the composer’s compositional virtuosity is on display. Through the whole runs an extraordinary spirit, a mixture of intellectual excitement, the feeling of a grand design, and a sense of fun.
