With seemingly every musician, orchestra, opera company and chamber group in the Western world observing the bicentennial of Mozart`s death, some listeners may worry whether they can possibly survive the Mozart year with their faculties-indeed, their love of music-intact.
Coping with Mozartean overkill may not be such a problem for record collectors, who can create their own desert-island selection of favorite works and performances from among the floodtide of new Mozart releases on compact disc.
Practically every major label has planned some sort of Mozart tribute between now and Dec. 5 (the actual 200th anniversary of Mozart`s passing) and one, Philips, will have recorded every note written by the Salzburg master-a mammoth project that by year`s end promises to encompass 45 volumes totaling 180 compact discs.
The first 11 volumes of that ambitious series have been released, comprising multi-disc sets of the 53 known symphonies, serenades,
divertimenti, dances and marches, piano concertos, violin concertos and sinfonie concertanti, wind concertos, quartets and quintets; most of the performances are analog reissues although several are digitally recorded.
One suspects that most collectors will shun the omnibus approach in favor of more selective grazing among the many worthy performances of individual Mozart masterpieces that crowd the CD catalog. But for those who prefer acquiring their Mozart in bulk, the cleanly remastered, attractively packaged and solidly annotated Philips sets are a safe investment and should give many hours of listening pleasure.
The virtues of the symphony performances (by Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin`s-in-the-Fields) and the keyboard concerto readings
(Alfred Brendel is the soloist in the majority of works) have been widely praised, and it`s good to find such stalwarts of the Philips roster as violinist Henryk Szeryng, oboist Heinz Holliger, hornist Hermann Baumann and the Grumiaux Trio and Ensemble represented by such lively and persuasive musicmaking.
Devotees of Mozart esoterica will welcome the inclusion of 12 early symphonies in Philips` Volume 1 (422 501-2, 6 CDs) and Philip Wilby`s reconstructions of a concerto for violin and piano (K.315f) and an Allegro movement from a sinfonia concertante for violin, viola and cello (K.320e) in Volume 8 (422 508-2, 4 CDs). The final CD in Volume 10 (422 510-2, 3 CDs)
contains 10 unpublished chamber pieces that Mozart rejected or left unfinished; although these distinctly minor efforts pale alongside the established chamber works, the fact they are by Mozart automatically makes them worth hearing.
To introduce collectors to its complete Mozart edition, Philips has issued a well-filled sampler CD (426 735-2) containing 19 movements and arias with an accompanying 200-page hardcover ”compactotheque” guide, ”The Complete Mozart,” that includes a volume-by-volume listing of musical contents and performers, and historical and biographical notes. Paralleling the Philips CD collection is a New Mozart Edition of the complete scores published by Barenreiter.
Not to be outdone, London Records has released an anthology of its own. Titled ”The Mozart Almanac” (430 111-2, 20 CDs, also available singly), it amounts to a chronological overview of Mozart`s development as a composer-beginning with a set of piano minuets (K.1-9a) little ”Wolferl” wrote between the ages of 5 and 7, and the uncompleted Requiem (K.626), which dates from his final, 35th year. The selections and apt annotations are by the Mozart authority H.C. Robbins Landon; among the capable performers are pianist Pascal Roge, soprano Emma Kirkby and the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood.
No digital-era recordings of the piano concertos are likely to surpass those by three legendary pianists-Solomon, Artur Schnabel and Edwin Fischer-reissued on EMI`s midpriced ”References” line.
Solomon-he never used his patronym, Cutner-may have been less famous than his colleagues, but his poised and finely chiseled readings of concertos K.450, 488 and 491, made in the early 1950s, are proof enough of his right to be included among the century`s greatest pianists (63707).
Schnabel`s Mozart concertos have seldom been out of the catalog since their first appearance in the 1940s. EMI`s three-disc set of five solo concertos, the two-piano concerto, K.365 (with Karl Ulrich Schnabel), and shorter works demonstrates why: This is playing of tremendous strength and gruff authority that transcends all shifts of stylistic fashion and takes one directly to the unadorned truth of this music (63703).
With their trail-blazing recordings, Schnabel and Fischer did much to foster audience interest in Mozart`s piano concertos, only one of which, K.466, was in the active repertory back then. Still, Fischer has always been a controversial Mozartean, an enormously influential musician whose sensitive playing was sometimes compromised by nerves and technical instability. Fortunately, his grandly scaled recordings of five concertos, two sonatas and several shorter pieces show why he was so admired by a later generation of pianists (63719, 3 CDs).
The German pianist Walter Gieseking`s tasteful refinement and cool delicacy of touch, which produce rather prettified readings of four concertos on EMI 63709 (2 CDs), are better suited to the solo piano works, which EMI has usefully gathered in an eight-CD box (63688). Mitsuko Uchida in her single-disc Philips recordings is more alive to the music`s expressive range; but Gieseking`s mature insights are not to be denied.
No performances could be further removed from Fischer`s heavy Romantic sensibility than Malcolm Bilson`s. For DG Archiv he has recorded all 27 keyboard concertos on fortepiano, receiving spirited support from John Eliot Gardiner and Gardiner`s period-instruments ensemble, the English Baroque Soloists. Crisp and rhythmically vital, the Bilson-Gardiner readings of Concertos Nos. 20-27 could prove to be to the `90s what Schnabel`s and Fischer`s interpretations were to the prewar era (427 846-2, 4 CDs).
Another period-instruments authority, Roger Norrington, has turned his attention to Mozart`s Symphonies Nos. 39 and 41 (”Jupiter”) and the results could hardly be more revelatory. Stripped of sentimentality, these bracing, whistle-clean readings by the London Classical Players clarify the inner workings of this music like no other, and you are always aware that an imaginative musician is shaping the proceedings (EMI 54090).
Mozart`s 1772 dramma per musica, ”Lucio Silla,” has enjoyed few modern revivals, perhaps because not even the young Mozart could overcome the clunky dramatic conventions of the serious-opera genre. However, listening to a recording with libretto in hand, one may appreciate the union of mundane words and heavenly music without worrying about how it plays in the theater. Teldec has assembled a superior group of singers-including Edita Gruberova, Peter Schreier, Cecilia Bartoli and Dawn Upshaw-under Nikolaus Harnoncourt`s direction, taping them in performances at the Vienna Konzerthaus in 1989. The singing is stylish, the conducting lean and mean (44928-2, 2 CDs).
In the probably spurious Violin Concerto in D Major, K.271a, one of today`s most accomplished young violinists, Cho-Liang Lin, is up against one of the great violinists of a previous age, Yehudi Menuhin, who recorded this slight but appealing work along with two other Mozart concertos in the 1930s. Splendid technician as he is, Lin has a few things to learn about achieving a truly relaxed spontaneity of phrasing.
Rounding out Lin`s disc are alert accounts of the Concerto No. 2, K.211, and Rondo, K.373; Raymond Leppard conducts the English Chamber Orchestra (Sony Classical 44913). Menuhin offers the Concerto No. 3, K.216, and so-called
”Adelaide” Concerto, K.Anh.294; Georges Enesco and Pierre Monteux are the conductors (EMI References 63718). The glassy brittleness of the transfers hardly flatters Menuhin`s tone, alas.
Pinchas Zukerman has embarked on an integral recording of the violin and piano sonatas with his longtime partner, pianist Marc Neikrug. The first volume of the series, including the sonatas K.8 to K.379 and Variations, K.360, makes a distinguished calling card, the instruments well balanced, the musicmaking big-boned but searching and sensitive (RCA Victor 60447).
One of the most famous Schnabel pupils was the British pianist Clifford Curzon, who teamed up with members of the Amadeus Quartet in 1952 to produce a classic recording of the two Mozart Piano Quartets, K.478 and K.493. Those readings have been reissued on London`s Historic series, newly harnessed to the Horn Quintet in a comparably worthy account with hornist Dennis Brain and the Griller Quartet (425 960-2).
