Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Celibidache was without question one of the most important and original conductors in recent memory. He was a perfectionist who disliked what he perceived to be the synthetic sounds created in the modern recording studio, preferring the immediacy of the concert platform and the interaction with a live audience. The Celibidache series celebrates the extraordinary legacy of his collaboration with the Müncher Philharmoniker, portraying the excitement and atmosphere of their live performances.

Celibidache was Musical Director of the Müncher Philharmoniker between 1979 and his death in 1996. Heavily influenced by Buddhism, he is renowned for creating exceptional and life-altering experiences for his audiences through his perfect balancing of sonic and spatial considerations.

These recordings are unique to EMI Classics and were painstakingly mastered to retain and recreate the vibrancy and impact of Celibidache and the Müncher Philharmoniker’s live performances.

Director and violinist Alexander Janiczek leads principal players from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in this beautifully intimate recording.

Mozart’s writing allows each player to shine and demonstrates the depth of talent within the ensemble, illustrating why this orchestra has had such extensive success with its previous Mozart recordings.

The works on this disc are full of well-known tunes which demonstrate Mozart’s trademark melodic beauty.

Acclaimed oboist, Robin Williams, gives a dazzling performance of the composer’s great masterpiece.

This is the fourteenth recording in the orchestra’s hugely successful partnership with Linn Records, a series that includes the award-winning Mozart Symphonies recordings with the late Sir Charles Mackerras.

Alexander Janiczek is a highly sought after director, soloist, guest leader and chamber musician who in addition to his appointment at the SCO, is a guest director of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Camerata Salzburg.

The Orchestra has a large UK fan base following recent performances in London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Inverness and Aberdeen.

The SCO has an impressive recording history including a Grammy-nominated set of Brahms Symphonies, winning the Orchestral category of the BBC Awards in 2009 and a 2011 ECHO Klassik Award for its Mozart recordings, in addition to much critical acclaim.

Performed by early-music-specialist soloists and the famous La Petite Bande/Sigiswald Kuijken.

Free CD-ROM contains the complete libretto in the original language.

Fits perfectly in the Brilliant Classics Mozart Opera series with the same performers: Cosi fan Tutte, Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro.

Debut recording for SONY from one of the world’s greatest string quartets.

The Emerson String Quartet stands alone in the history of string quartets as musicians of unrivalled eminence with an incomparable list of great recordings over three decades.

For its debut on Sony Classical, the Quartet has selected Mozart’s last three string quartets, the “Prussian” quartets. Having recorded Mozart's six "Haydn Quartets" as well as the flute quartets, the Emersons have long desired to add more Mozart to their discography. This new album sees them recording Mozart quartets for the first time in 20 years.

While Kiri Te Kanawa was still preparing for that career-defining debut as the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, she made her first Mozart disc under Colin Davis: a collection of sacred music, including the Solemn Vespers, KV 339, with its serene setting of ‘Laudate Dominum’, and Exsultate, jubilate. The Countess became the singer’s calling-card, and she repeated the role immediately in San Francisco and at Glyndebourne. The thwarted Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni followed, again under Davis at Covent Garden, before Kiri took her Countess to the Met in New York in February 1976, and sang her first Fiordiligi in Paris, in a production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. The Paris Opera was also the location of Kiri’s debut as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte in 1977. Her leap into superstardom came when she sang at the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana in July 1981. The previous month she had committed her Countess to disc in a classic recording for Decca under Georg Solti.

This collection brings together for the first time on disc, Dame Kiri’s complete Mozart recital discs for Decca (with György Fischer) and Philips (with Sir Colin Davis and Jeffrey Tate). Included too are two arias from her celebrated recording of Le nozze di Figaro with Sir Georg Solti, an aria from her sublime recording of Così fan tutte with James Levine (for Deutsche Grammophon) as well as sacred arias, and sacred music conducted by Neville Marriner and Colin Davis.

The 18th century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the 18th century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.