Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"VIVARTE" is the 'Sony Classical' period music label, known for producing outstanding recordings on period instruments. The recordings by legendary producer Wolf Erichson are made with the best recording technologies available & by one of the best production teams in the world (Tritonus Music Production, Stuttgart). The box-set includes recordings with specialists in historically informed performance practice, such as Anner Bylsma, Gustav Leonhardt, Tafelmusik, Huelgas Ensemble, L'Archibudelli & others. The CD's are presented in paper sleeves with the original artwork of the former CD's. Tne box contains a x250 page booklet with tracklistings & the original liner notes of each recording.

After Berlin, Vienna was the music centre to which the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler had the closest artistic connections. Under his direction the Vienna Philharmonic made a whole series of radio recordings that have now, for the first time, been carefully edited under the auspices of the Furtwängler specialist Gottfried Kraus and released by Orfeo on 18 CDs. The series commences with recordings from 1944/45, including one of Mozart’s g-minor symphony K550 in which Furtwängler demonstrates his clear sense of form from the very first bars. Beethoven’s third 'Leonore' Overture and an excerpt from Schubert’s 'Rosamunde' music complete our selection from this, the earliest of the recording sessions. Several works are to be found more than once in this anthology. Thus, Beethoven’s Eroica can be compared in an early version from 1944 and a later recording from 1953, just as Bruckner’s Eighth can be compared in recordings from 1944 and 1954. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is offered no less than three times here – from the years 1951, 1952 and 1953 – a work that surely no other conductor could make into such an 'event', an experience of universal import, as could Wilhelm Furtwängler. This was also true of his Brahms interpretations, represented here by the first two symphonies, the 'Haydn' Variations, the Double Concerto and the 'German Requiem', which is sadly only extant in an incomplete recording from 1951. This is, incidentally, the only time in this collection that we hear Furtwängler conducting the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Besides Irmgard Seefried and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau – two vocal soloists whom Furtwängler admired and engaged repeatedly – we can hear the chorus of the Vienna Singakademie on this recording.

They also sing in Bach’s 'St Matthew Passion': in a partial recording from 1952 and in the famous performance of 1954 that was shortened by Furtwängler himself, but which is here released in a restored recording based on the original radio broadcast, without the cuts that were later made by record companies. Here as elsewhere in this collection, the acoustic heritage of the Viennese radio stations of the time has been restored using the best possible technological means available today. Even collector’s items such as the Piano Concertos K365 and 482 by Mozart, with Dagmar Bella and Paul Badura-Skoda, have probably never sounded better since they were first heard in the concert hall. Hence justice is done to Furtwängler’s timeles” style of music-making that unites different epochs, ranging from Gluck’s Overture to 'Iphigenie in Aulis' to Mahler’s 'Songs of a Wayfarer' and Furtwängler’s own Second Symphony – a work that despite all its late-Romantic echoes succeeds in attaining originality and a considerable emotional impact. This universality of Furtwängler has not found its match to this day.

This collection showcases four of Mozart’s most celebrated operas, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and Die Zauberflöte, with the inimitable Otto Klemperer at the helm. Featuring a host of star performers, including Lucia Popp as Despina, Elisabeth Söderström as Countess Almaviva and Nicolai Gedda as Tamino, these classic recordings demonstrate Klemperer’s supreme understanding of Mozart’s operas.

It was one of the bonuses of Klemperer’s indian Summer in the recording studio that he was able to record all three Mozart/Da Ponte operas, as well as Die Zauberflöte, a work for which he had a particularly deep affection. Die Zauberflöte was, he believed, a ‘perfect’ composition, albeit an inexhaustible one which no single production could ever hope to encompass. Sadly productions which he conducted in Berlin in 1929, Milan in 1950 and London in 1962 were all unsatisfactory in one way or another. Perhaps, in the end, it required what André Malraux called the ‘musée imaginaire’ of the gramophone to realise Klemperer’s dream of this ‘perfect’ work.

Klemperer’s 1964 recording of Die Zauberflöte came close to an ideal, despite the abridgements he imposed. Away from the theatre, he argued, no one wants to sit through the work’s lengthy spoken dialogue. Producer Walter Legge tried to persuade him otherwise but having made two previous dialogue-free recordings of the opera – with Beecham in Berlin in 1938 and Karajan in Vienna in 1950 – he was on shaky ground. The fact that the earlier recordings were made in the era of 78 rpm recording when time and space were at a premium cut no ice with Klemperer.

For the recording, Klemperer was working with a hand-picked cast which Legge confidently declared to be ‘as perfect as the world’s resource could yield’. A producer who casts the principal roles from strength and then has Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig, and Marga Höffgen in reserve for the Three Ladies is entitled to make such a claim. The set was, and remains, a glorious achievement and, though Legge would leave EMI later that same year, the stage was set for Klemperer to continue to record the three Da Ponte operas. The first was Don Giovanni, an opera with which the demonically driven Klemperer had been closely associated throughout his career. Legge had engaged him to record the work with an outstanding cast in the autumn of 1959 but three days into the sessions Klemperer had been forced to withdraw with a severe attack of pericarditis. Carlo Maria Giulini took over the direction of what would become one of the most celebrated of all Mozart opera recordings. EMI continued to provide stellar casts for their Mozart recordings, none more so than that for Così fan tutte, a project which brought Klemperer’s career as a Mozart conductor full circle. The concert performance of Così fan tutte which he conducted in London on 21 February 1971 was to be his final operatic offering: a fitting end to a journey that had begun in a different age, and a very different world over half a century earlier.

Decca Classics releases ‘Ashkenazy: 50 Years on Decca’ on 4 March 2013, a limited edition box-set comprised of 50 CDs to celebrate the label’s remarkable 50-year recording partnership with Vladimir Ashkenazy.

‘Ashkenazy: 50 Years on Decca - the Original Jacket Collection’ includes many key recordings since Ashkenazy’s recording debut for the label in March 1963.

Decca Classics’ new release showcases a rich and varied repertoire, with Ashkenazy’s now-legendary debut recording of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.3 featuring on the first of the 50 CDs ( with the LSO under the baton of Anatole Fistoulari). The collection includes Ashkenazy collaborating with some of classical music’s greatest conductors, such as Solti, Kondrashin, Maazel, Previn, Barenboim, Haitink and Mehta; accompanying great singers and instrumentalists such as Perlman, Harrell and Söderström; as virtuoso pianist in a wide range of solo repertoire; and as an internationally-renowned conductor, particularly of Russian and Nordic repertoire.

The limited-edition ‘Ashkenazy: 50 Years on Decca’ box-set is beautifully packaged with original LP jackets in the label’s now-familiar cube box with hinged lid, and also includes booklet notes in English and Japanese, a complete discography of Ashkenazy’s recordings on Decca, a composer index, and a unique article from his long-time producer Andrew Cornall on Ashkenazy in the studio, making this a collector’s essential.

This is the first ever complete collection of the legendary Heifetz-Piatigorsky concerts. A budget priced, 21-CD boxed set in deluxe clamshell box with standard cardboard sleeves, with facsimile sleeves & labels. There is a new introduction from Heifetz expert John Maltese. Highlights of these superb set include Dvorak's Piano Quintet No.2 & Tchaikovsky's souvenir de Florence

This CD showcases Backhaus’s great virtuosity.

During his years in Salzburg, Mozart wrote a series of shorter mass settings, for which he drew on the models of his senior colleague Michael Haydn. Regina coeli reveals his supreme skill at writing for the solo voice. The Missa brevis in D, K. 194 is a work of great solemnity, employing a remarkable range of expressive contrasts, whilst the Missa brevis in B flat, K. 275 is notable for its sublime lyricism and grace. The Allegro and Andante in F minor, K. 608 is regarded as Mozart’s finest work for the organ and has become one of the cornerstones of the organ repertory.

The church music Mozart wrote in Salzburg is both ingenious and expressive, and has wide appeal. Our disc expands the choral focus.