Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 14 in E flat major, K449 - download (MP3 & FLAC)

Recently awarded Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Performing Arts Award 2012 for Lifetime Achievement in Classical Music, pianist Janina Fialkowska presents her second Mozart CD on ATMA with two rarely heard Mozart concertos.

Based in Ottawa, The Chamber Players of Canada is a group made up of some of the best musicians from across Canada.

Winners of the St. Martins in the Fields Chamber Music Competition and two Hattori Foundation Awards, the Piatti Quartet is fast emerging as one of the UK’s leading young string quartets.

The Quartet’s debut recording features master Mozartian Gottlieb Wallisch in a stunning performance of his fellow Austrian’s own rarely-heard chamber orchestrations in ‘Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 12, 13 & 14’.

In contrast to the orchestral version the ensemble strikingly enhances the intricacies of the string writing and encourages immediate interaction among the five musicians.

Wallisch and the Piatti Quartet performed this repertoire to packed audiences at various venues and festivals across the UK in the summer and autumn of 2011.

In 2012 the Piatti Quartet (Charlotte Scott 1st violin, Michael Trainor 2nd violin, David Wigram viola, Jessie Ann Richardson cello) were chosen for the UK-wide ‘Future Classics Classical Tour’ designed to promote the ‘stars of tomorrow’.

The Quartet has performed at both the Newbury Spring Festival and the Bath International Festivals plus major UK venues UK including the Purcell room, Conway Hall, St Georges (Bristol), The Queens Hall (Edinburgh) and has made numerous appearances live on BBC Radio 3.

Named a Steinway Artist in 2012, Gottlieb Wallisch is a competition prize-winner and a respected artist in the Viennese piano tradition.

Wallisch has performed with many leading orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales and has appeared at leading festivals and in major concert halls including the Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, Klavierfestival Ruhr, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Tonhalle Zurich, Musikhalle Hamburg and Singapore Arts Festival amongst others.

After a praised discography; Ciacconas of JS BACH diapason découverte in 2005, Préludes, Chorals & Fugues de JS BACH diapason d’or in 2009, several records in romantic music; Schumann in 2007, Chopin in 2010, Edna Stern offers her first concerto recording.

She chose early Mozart concertos which played many times in a quintet format and for which she rediscovered this chamber approach with the soloist of the Orchestre d’Auvergne. As Mozart left Salzbourg’s archibishop to become an independant musician, his new concertos are a true change compared to the baroque form of concertos where the soloist was at the center followed by the orchestra. Mozart chose a passionate dialogue betwen the piano and individual members of the orchestra, where the piano express its feeling and the orchestra comments them, the winds play at the first person. “Both the level and the nature of the dialogue in K.271 were without precedent. So was the promotion of the wind section to the front ranks of musical diplomacy.Jeremy Siepmann

'In my view the modern piano, with its immense possibilities, can evoke at the same time or successively a whole host of characters and feelings, as in an opera. But it also retains sufficient distance to be able to express itself metaphorically. These characters seem to speak to us, but not in specific terms. Only the extreme precision of their phrasing makes them real and close to us. It’s all there in the notes, with incredible skill in the detail! And that’s what I love in these concertos: a skill that is so poetic and touching.' Edna Stern

The youthful Biava Quartet are the winners of the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and top prizes at the Premio Borciani and London International Competitions.