Mozart: Fantasia in D minor, K397 - CD

SFZ Music, the independent label for His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts, are pleased to announce their latest release, a recording given by one of the finest scholar-performers currently working in Britain.

John Irving is an internationally recognised Mozart scholar, having written five books including the international best-selling 'The Treasures of Mozart', and also widely acclaimed as one of the finest interpreters of keyboard music from the early classical period.

'Mozart on the Hass Clavichord' is a programme showcasing the wonderful instrument by Johann Adolph Hass (1715-76) made in Hamburg in 1763 and currently residing in the Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments.

Irving explores in detail historical performance practice issues, as well as reminding us that the Clavichord remained a favoured instrument for Mozart throughout his life, and accenting the intimate, domestic nature of his keyboard music.

On volume four of his widely acclaimed traversal of Mozart's music for solo keyboard, fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout performs on an instrument by Paul McNulty, modeled on a Viennese original by Anton Walter & Sohn (c.1805). The program includes Piano Sonatas in D major K.311 and G major K.283 and the lovely Variations on 'Je suis Lindor' in E flat Major, K.354. As with the other volumes in this exceptional series, Bezuidenhout brings out colors and shadings in these works that are only possible when performed on a fortepiano.

Beautiful performances of Mozart’s late piano sonatas by the world renowned Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires. The recordings originally appeared on the Denon label in the 1970s and are now available from Regis at super-budget price.

'Pires has always been something of a Mozart specialist, and her playing is tasteful and cleanly articulated, the lyrical melodies sensitively shaped, the passage work fluent and even. Nothing she does is ever harsh or graceless.' Gramophone

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.

"2006 will surely be full of celebratory concerts and recordings dedicated to a man born 250 years ago… The recital on this disc includes Mozart's structurally more 'free' music for piano: Rondos, Fantasies, and Preludes. He inherited these forms from Johann Sebastian Bach and, perhaps more importantly, through his sons Carl Philipp and Johann Christian.

The brooding opening of the great Fantasie in D minor, K397, gives way to a more light-hearted air. This piece has acquired a nineteenth-century editorial ending with no Mozartian provenance - the manuscript is incomplete. I offer an

'egarrtorial' option for the close of this little gem. Mozart originally intended the Fantasie in C minor, K396, to include a part for violin. Too little of this survives to make an adequate reconstruction. However, Abbé Maximilian Stadler (a close friend of Mozart, and a fine and interesting musician in his own right) made an admirable completion of this work for piano solo.

Although the second part gives way to fantasy of perhaps a more Schubertian nature, it is an extremely fine working of Mozart's material. The more structured pieces on the disc - the Rondos, Adagios, Marches, Minuett, and Gigue - demonstrate no less imagination and depth of character.

I end the programme with the Adagio in C major, K356, originally written for the Glass harmonika. I believe that using a fine original early piano can help us discover a multitude of colours in his music and bring us into Mozart's sound-world. I am very thankful he is still in our world at 250. Happy birthday!" Richard Egarr

Paul Badura-Skoda is one of the most important pianists of our time. On this CD, he performs with Jörg Demus. Many of his recordings have won international awards. The works are performed on period instruments.

SFZ MUSIC are pleased to announce their latest release, a ground-breaking collaboration between two leading experts in historical performance: Jane Booth, one of the finest players of the chalameau and early clarinet, teams up with John Irving, Director of the Institute of Musical Research at the University of London, to present a programme of exceptional grace, beauty, and depth. Clarinets by Arrangement offers an unusual perspective on some familiar chamber works from the late 18th & early 19th centuries, along with some less familiar repertoire that is well worth discovering. Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet K589 and Beethoven’s Horn Sonata Op.17 are presented here in arrangements made around the turn of the 19th-century for clarinet, or basset horn and piano.

Underlying Clarinets by Arrangement is a belief – drawing on a range of contemporary documents including treatises, composers’ letters and contemporary reviews – that ‘the music is not the score’ and that a fundamental aspect of music from the later 18th-century is the sheer provisional quality of its musical texts: not so much the end of a compositional process as part of the ongoing journey to be continued by the performers.