Mozart: Das Lied der Trennung, K519

After their highly personal exploration of the Romantic lied,Werner Güra and Christoph Berner now turn to a less well-known repertoire with this selection of vocal and instrumental works. Songs for voice and piano occupied Mozart almost throughout his career as a composer. Between the first extant song, An die Freude K53, written in the autumn of 1768, and the last three completed in January 1791, there are around thirty more works in the genre, which are spread irregularly over his different creative periods.A dominant position is occupied by the year 1787, in which nearly a third of his total song output is concentrated.

The Rondo in F major K494 of June 1786 is seldom played in its original version, namely as a separate piano piece. Mozart later extended this graceful work by a few bars, changed the tempo marking, and used it in this form as the final movement of his Piano Sonata K533. Scarcely better known is the 'kleine Gigue' in G major K574.While the rondo is typical of the musical fashions of Mozart's time, the gigue harks back to the long-vanished era of Bach and Handel. In this piece Mozart goes so far as to appropriate a theme from one of Handel's harpsichord suites.Traces of Mozart's legendary skill in keyboard improvisation may be found in the Fantasia in D minor K397 (1782), which is now among his most frequently played piano works.The Six Variations in G major K180 are based on a theme from the Act II finale of Antonio Salieri's opera La fiera di Venezia, with which Mozart probably became acquainted in Vienna in the summer of 1773.

As a lieder interpreter Werner Güra gives recitals at the Wigmore Hall in London, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Lincoln Center in New York, the Barcelona Schubertiade and the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg.Among his successful recordings for harmonia mundi are programmes of Schubert, Schumann and Wolf - all selected as Editor's Choice by Gramophone magazine.

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.

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.