Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Performer: Kristian Bezuidenhout
Orchestra: Freiburger Barockorchester
Conductor: Petra Müllejans
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Harmonia Mundi
Catalogue: HMC902147
Release: 2012
Size: 1.26 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K453
01. I. Allegro
02. II. Andante
03. III. Allegretto
04. Rondo for Piano & Orchestra in A major, K386
Piano Concerto No. 22 in E flat major, K482
05. I. Allegro
06. II. Andante
07. III. Allegretto
“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 It has meant that the kind of keyboard-dominated sound one sometimes encounters, has been replaced by what E. T. A. Hoffmann described as a symphony with piano obbligato – the piano, playing both solo and continuo, darts in and out of the lush orchestral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.”