Mozart: Das Veilchen, K476

A new and exquisite collection of German songs from counter-tenor Andreas Scholl, providing a perfect balance between text and music. The choice of music reflects Scholl’s belief that music need not be confined in performance to a particular voice type, as long as “the singer’s approach is true.”

Scholl pulls off a bravura display in Schubert’s An Mignon, singing in both the counter-tenor and baritone register. The performance of these songs reveals an intuitive understanding between singer and accompanist, Andreas Scholl and Tamar Halperin.

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.

Jana Büchner’s selection of lieder traces the evolution of the song from Mozart and Schubert all the way through to Hensel and Mendelssohn.

The works deal with the joys and sufferings of love, hence “Thoughts of Love”. Included are lieder with horn obligato and Lewy’s song (1802 - 1881) is thought to be a premiere recording.

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.

The bonus recital in this collection was recorded in Berlin in 1956.

Despite the substantial number of Lieder written for voice and piano in the 19th century, the guitar was also used occasionally as an accompaniment -- it was Berlioz's first instrument, and Schubert composed a number of Lieder for guitar and voice, considering himself a guitarist first and a pianist second. Therefore, while the three sets of German Songs by Louis Spohr on this recording were composed originally for piano and voice in 1816--1826, with editions for guitar appearing shortly after the original publications, we can be sure that Spohr would have approved of these arrangements.

The Mozart songs included on this disc were also originally composed for piano, with the exception of K351 and K349, which were written for mandolin accompaniment. Three of the songs were transcribed for guitar by Wenzeslaus Matiega (1773--1830) a Bohemian who was based in Vienna.

Mozart was Spohr's idol, so it is fitting that these two composers' songs have been programmed together to create a unique and complementary programme.

Compared to Elisabeth Grümmer’s rank as a singer, her recordings are shamefully few in number, giving these radio recordings a special documentary significance. “Whoever has heard Elisabeth Grümmer singing cannot forget the way this lovely voice, at once ethereal and yet full sounding, effortlessly flows along,” wrote Lafranco Rasponi.

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).