Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

In her day Marcelle Meyer was the doyenne of French piano. Cortot admired her and she performed with the likes of Ravel and Couperin. She had a vast repertoire that extended from the Baroque to contemporary composers like Stravinsky and she left a considerable recorded legacy. The recordings she made have not always been as readily available as one might wish, so it is a great pleasure to be able to get one's hands on this set of her recordings from 1927 to 1957. At a total of seventeen discs, this is a fascinating collection as well as a fantastic bargain. The composers represented include Chabrier, Debussy, Ravel, Bach, Couperin, Scarlatti, Mozart, Rossini, Schubert and Stravinsky. There is also a sonata by Oscar Espla, which was a new name to me. Almost all of the recordings are of the solo repertoire (there are no chamber pieces and only two Mozart concerti). There is also some reduplication of music Meyer recorded more than once: this applies to a lesser extent to the Couperin and Rameau, and to a slightly greater extent to the Scarlatti sonatas.

The paintings of Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88) constitute one of the most poignant and evocative icons of Georgian England; he painted supremely accomplished portraits of a wide social spectrum, and landscapes which capture the verdancy of England prior to the Stygian advance of the Industrial Revolution.

Gainsborough’s own creativity sought expression in music as much as in painting, which was unusual in an age when musical ability was mainly considered the preserve of the ladies.

For this musical tribute to Gainsborough, we have gathered together pieces by several of his friends; Abel, J.C. Bach, Giardini, Linley & Straube.

Written one after the other in the space of just three months and with unprecedented energy, Mozart’s last three symphonies carry within them the aesthetic ideal of their composer, touched by a grace that is already pre-Romantic, and thus form an exemplary musical testament. The Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, a pioneering collective among period-instrument orchestras, reveals a richness, a modernity, a visionary complexity that prepares the way for the Beethovenian revolution.

The approach of the orchestra founded and conducted by Philippe Herreweghe is to explore in depth the sonority and the motor rhythms of the symphonic writing of a Mozart here at the height of his powers.

To record this Mozart trilogy is a bold undertaking for any musician, and always an extraordinary event for the public!

Otmar Suitner's Mozart interpretations during his years in Berlin are legendary. This recording of Die Entführung demonstrates that the Austrian conductor was already well aware, when he worked in Dresden, of how to portray Mozart's dramatic verve and his psychological sensitivity: this is a real gem, recorded in the Lukaskirche in Dresden, where so many recordings with Suitner were made.

These recordings of Mozart’s String Quartets (some of his final ones) KV 499 and KV 589, made in 1961 at the Sofiensaal in Vienna, have historic significance, as the last gasp of a Viennese style of string playing in Mozart which stemmed from before World War II. Otto Strasser (1901–96), Willi Boskovsky (1909–91), his exact contemporary Emanuel Brabec (1909–98) and Rudolf Streng (1915–88) had all studied with luminaries of the orchestra from the era when Arnold Rosé, Franz Mairecker and Julius Stwertka led the violins, Ernst Moravec the violas and Friedrich Buxbaum the cellos. Strasser studied with Stwertka, Streng with both Moravec and Barylli’s teacher Mairecker, Brabec with Buxbaum. Strasser joined the Philharmonic in 1922, Boskovsky in 1932 and Brabec in 1938. All four played in the old relaxed way in which the tone was carried as if on the breath, with easeful portamento and legato, like the singing of a bel canto specialist. To hear Brabec’s airborne legato in the Larghetto of KV 589 is to experience a style which can no longer be duplicated. This issue is part of a survey of the Vienna Philharmonic Quartet’s discography for Decca, now reissued on Eloquence. Both quartets are released internationally on CD for the first time.