Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 22 in E flat major, K482

"Early on in the planning of these sessions, we decided that the microphone placement would be very different from traditional set-ups. After much experimentation, we opted for a layout very much like theatre in the round, with the keyboard in the very centre, winds in a line facing the solo instrument, and the strings as a sort of envelope all around and behind the piano. Crucially, it brings the winds – such operatic characters in Mozart’s Viennese concertos – very much to the fore of the sonic picture; it also encourages a much more natural and vivid interplay between the piano and the wind band. It has meant that the kind of keyboard-dominated sound one sometimes encounters, has been replaced by what E. T. A. Hoffmann described as a symphony with piano obbligato – the piano, playing both solo and continuo, darts in and out of the lush orchestral texture; at times, incredibly prominent, at other moments, purely accompanimental. Mozart’s sensational gifts as an improviser are well known by now, and indeed there are frequent places in the piano part where embellishment is an obligatory element of the stylistic grammar. Our feeling was that this spirit of spontaneity should extend to the orchestra as well. One will notice that the solo wind instruments depart from the text on numerous occasions; these ornaments were partly pre-planned, partly refined and revised by the wonderful wind principals of the FBO. After all, Mozart was writing for some of the most gifted and wellrespected wind soloists of the time, and although it is hard to prove, I find it difficult to imagine that he would have frowned on his collaborators’ natural tendency to introduce subtle embellishments." Kristian Bezuidenhout

Kristian Bezuidenhout's next release on harmonia mundi USA will be Volume 4 of his solo Mozart project which has received unanimously good, sometimes great, reviews, including IRR Outstanding, Gramophone Recommends, CD Review Disc of the Week and a BBC Music Magazine Choice.

David Fray – named Instrumentalist of the Year in France’s Victoires de la Musique 2010 – retains his focus on Austro-German repertoire with his second CD of concertos for Virgin Classics: Mozart’s Concertos Nos 22 and 25 with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra under Dutch violinist-turned-conductor (and Music Director of the Dallas Symphony), Jaap van Zweden.

“Above all, I would like to advocate a certain vision of music and to make it accessible without altering its value or the level on which it operates.” David Fray – Instrumentalist of the Year in France’s Victoires de la Musique 2010 – turns to Mozart for his second CD of concertos for Virgin Classics. The response of The Sunday Times to his last solo release was: “No Schubert-lover should miss this piano recital by David Fray,” while The Guardian evoked “pianism of the highest class”.

Fray’s last release was a solo programme of Schubert, a figure who embodies the transition to Romanticism from the Classicism of Mozart, a fellow Austrian. The recital was praised by the critics for its distinctive and many-layered interpretation: “No Schubert-lover should miss this piano recital by David Fray,” urged the BBC Music Magazine, while The Sunday Times felt that: “These are wonderful performances by the young French pianist David Fray, a player with a beautiful touch and the finest control of dynamics and chording ... By taking his time, without ever weakening the music’s inexorable momentum, Fray fills every note with meaning, in such a way that we feel intensely each mercurial change of mood and colour and texture, relish Schubert’s astonishing harmonic invention to the full, and relive the heartbreak, the ferocity, the elation, the visionary flights of these inexhaustible works.” The Guardian was enthused by “the sheer lucidity and polish of Fray's playing, its exceptional command of colour and touch, and the way he invariably uses that range of sound to point up musical structures in a meaningful way … pianism of the highest class.”

Paul Badura-Skoda is a legendary artist. His musical personality is a rare combination of total devotion to music, a passionate quest for authenticity, and a great feeling of responsibility toward the composer. He is Viennese and world-famous for his affinities with Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.

With this double CD, Audite opens a four-part series of recordings of the Hungarian pianist Géza Anda (1921-1976) from the archives of the West German Radio Cologne. These are both studio- and live-recordings from 1952 until 1970 which have until now remained unpublished or are premiere CD recordings. It is the aim of this edition to display a representative cross section of Anda’s diverse repertoire and also to close a delicate gap in his discography.

Published for the very first time are the recordings of the four famous Viennese piano concertos by Mozart: Anda appears as soloist and conductor in one and is also joined by renowned conductors Joseph Keilberth and Constantin Silvestri together with Camerata Academica Salzburg and the Radio Symphony Orchestra Cologne.

Finally, Anda can be experienced for the first time as a conductor in an impetuous recording of Mozart’s Symphony in C major KV 200.