Mozart: Die kleine Spinnerin, K531

Mozart created masterpieces in virtually all the established genres. We know him as symphonist, writer of a great many concertos, especially for piano, and a unique and very productive opera composer. His sublime chamber music was written for numerous ensembles, and he composed dozens of the most beautiful serenades and divertimentos. But as a lied composer he is perhaps rather neglected, perhaps because in the minds of many music lovers the German lied is a phenomenon that came into being with Franz Schubert some decades after Mozart’s death in 1791. In fact, Mozart wrote about thirty lieder, fourteen of which were published during his lifetime. It is hardly too much to say that he was also the most important lied composer of his day.

The soprano Gemma Bertagnolli compares the music of Mozart to a country; “I feel welcome in this place of grandeur and miniature, of rigour and frivolity, of love and terror, of truth and jest.” She performs these works with passionate elegance.

Mozart’s songs are surprisingly varied in many ways. Although there isn’t a great number of them, they date from all periods of the composer’s short life and are widely diverse in character, from simple strophic charmers such as ‘Komm, lieber Mai’ (Sehnsucht nach dem Frühlinge) to extended and intensely serious utterances such as those he wrote for the Freemasons (Die ihr des unermesslichen Weltalls, from Eine kleine deutsche Kantate). They also vary in language: most are in German but he also set French and Italian texts.

All are represented here, sung by two of Britain’s most popular and outstanding singers.

Mozart loved the human voice, which he used as an instrument of musical expression throughout his compositional career from the age of six or seven. His Lieder, written largely in response to requests and commissions from acquaintances, friends and publishers deal with everyday subjects such as friendship and romance but also with social and political occasions such as the Emperor Joseph II’s Turkish campaign. Some were written in connection with Mozart’s activities as a freemason. Only one, the bitter-sweet Das Veilchen (The Violet) is set to the words of a major poet, Goethe. The many miniature masterpieces to be heard on this recording include Komm, liebe Zither, komm (Come, dear Zither), a musical precursor, with mandolin accompaniment, of Don Giovanni’s serenade Deh vieni alla finestra, the idyllic Der Zauberer (The Sorcerer) and the dramatically graphic Als Luise die Briefe ihres ungetreuen Liebhabers verbrannte (When Louisa burned the letters of her unfaithful lover).

Will this complete recording of Mozart's songs be like one cherry too many, punctuating an already very copious dinner? In other words, will the Mozart year have stuffed the discophile to the point of nausea with projects concerning the Divine Wolfie? It is of course because we do not believe this to be the case that we offer you this disc. For, as Sylvain Fort so well remarks in his introduction, Mozart's songs have been thoroughly neglected; too often thought to be the poor relation in his output.

In fact, though the quality is unequal, some wonderful pieces are to be found, mischievous, tender and nostalgic pieces. It is also a fascinating pathway through the whole of Mozart's creative life, one that ran, as is well known, from a very early childhood to the brink of death.

In order to give substance to this project we have chosen three formidable artistes whose destinies have continually criss-crossed: the Belgian Sophie Karthäuser and the German Stephan Loges met as students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London where a certain Eugene Asti was teaching. The two singers later came across each other in the prestigious Wigmore Hall Song Competition: whereas he was the winner, she received the public's prize. Then it was La Monnaie that brought them together in The Magic Flute. Eugene Asti has had the brilliant idea of uniting them once more for the songs of Mozart. A trio was born.