Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2014 Choral category winner! Purely on grounds of performance alone, this is one of the finest Mozart Requiems of recent years. John Butt brings to Mozart the microscopic care and musicological acumen that have made his Bach and Handel recordings so thought-provoking and satisfying.

Maria João Pires “shapes and colours every phrase, and with immaculate taste, and she makes sure the phrases end as eloquently as they begin,” wrote Gramophone in 1974. “She conveys not just the details but the relevance of every note to the whole … Best of all, she communicates everything she has discovered about the music, and it is worth having.” This Portuguese pupil of Wilhelm Kempff, Pires was one of the artists who defined the Erato label in the 1970s and 1980s. This 5-CD box gathers together the recordings she made over the period from 1976 to 1985 and it reflects the consistent focus of her repertoire, with its special emphasis on Austro-German composers of the Classical and early-Romantic periods. Embracing solo works, piano duets and concertos, it contains works by Mozart, Schumann, Beethoven, but also by Bach and Chopin.

Mozart's opera seria tells of the King of Crete who is saved from a terrible storm by promising the gods that he sacrifice the first person he meets when reaching land, only to be greeted by his beloved son Idamante. In this Salzburg staging under Sir Roger Norrington Mexican tenor Ramón Vargas sings the title role, with Czech mezzo Magdalena Kozena giving an acclaimed performance as Idamante. Salzburg favourite Anja Harteros is the jealous Elettra, with Ekaterina Siurina as Idamante's beloved Ilia.

This is an ATMA Classique reissue of one of Les Violons du Roy’s seminal discs: the orchestra’s 2002 Dorian label recording of Mozart’s Requiem as revised and completed by Robert D. Levin. The recording won the JUNO® Award for Best Classical Album of the year in the Vocal or Choral Performance category. Founding conductor Bernard Labadie brought Les Violons du Roy and its the fifteen member core together in 1984. The ensemble specializes in the vast repertoire of music for chamber orchestra, performed on modern instruments but in a stylistic manner most appropriate to the work’s era.

At the ripe old age of 19 Mozart wrote five violin concertos, and they represent his coming of age as a composer of orchestral music. From here on, it's basically one masterpiece after another. Though not difficult works, technically speaking, they partake in full measure of Mozart's uniquely sensual brand of melody. That means that successful performances must know how to spin out a singing musical line, while at the same time making the most of the rare opportunities for soloistic display.

Don Giovanni’s special amalgam of dark drama and sparkling comedy is captured with startling immediacy by Carlo Maria Giulini. The Viennese baritone Eberhard Wächter faces a particularly formidable pair of noble ladies: Donna Anna in the form of Joan Sutherland (in one of her rare recordings for a label other than Decca) and the Donna Elvira of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

Mozart claimed to dislike the flute and, for that matter, the harp as well which also plays a prominent role in this compilation. But in spite of that, he produced music for the flute in a variety of genres all of which is delightful and much of which is masterful. This release on Philips's "duo" series presents an excellent opportunity for an overview of Mozart's works for flute, well played. It also offers a rare opportunity to hear a variety of performers on the flute and other instruments and orchestras.

French pianist Alexandre Tharaud is known for programs that hold together only marginally, and so it is here: Mozart's French piano student who went by the name of Mademoiselle Jeunehomme (or Jenamy or Jénomé) is associated with only one of these works, and possibly not even with that one: she is said to have given the premiere of the sprawling Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major, K. 271, but the work has all the hallmarks of music Mozart wrote for himself.

Even though Vladimir Ashkenazy is most often celebrated for his brilliantly virtuosic interpretations of Romantic repertoire, his skills in playing works of the Classical era are just as worthy, as proved by this 10-disc set from London of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's piano concertos. These performances span a period from 1966 to 1988, capturing a youthful and vigorous Ashkenazy playing and conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and the English Chamber Orchestra from the keyboard, in approved Mozartian fashion. All of the keyboard concertos are here, including the official 27 concertos for piano and orchestra, the Concerto for two pianos in E flat major, K. 365, the Concerto for three pianos in F major, K. 242, as well as the two Rondos K. 382 and K. 386. Ashkenazy's elegant playing has been highly praised by critics and placed on a level with his esteemed contemporaries Murray Perahia, Daniel Barenboim, and Alfred Brendel, all past masters of Mozart's primary medium of expression.

The first complete recording of W.A. Mozart’s piano sonatas on the composer’s own fortepiano (Anton Walter, 1782). This comprehensive, 7-CD boxed set also comprises unfinished fragments by the Austrian composer, here completed by American pianist and Mozart-scholar Robert Levin in consideration of Mozart’s idioms and the compositional mannerisms of his era. Robert Levin’s interpretations of the piano sonatas, too, are informed by the performance practice customs of the First Viennese School, including improvised elements and decorations in the repeats.

Even in an age of thrilling countertenors, Max Emanuel Cencic stands out for the heroic scale and brilliance of his voice, his expansive lyricism, and his imagination and enterprise in choice of repertoire. Cencic has excelled as both a soprano and a mezzo-soprano, and Fantastic Cencic showcases his extraordinary interpretative range – from the great and lesser-known masters of the Baroque to the bel canto of Rossini and composers of the Romantic era from Schubert to Strauss. The third of these three CDs comprises recordings from the early 1990s, shortly after Cencic left the Wiener Sängerknaben, which are released here for the first time.

Nous ne sommes pas certains que les spectateurs de l’Opéra de Zurich aient éprouvé tout à fait le même plaisir que nous à la vue de cette production de Jonathan Miller. Car la réussite de cette captation doit beaucoup au travail de la réalisatrice vidéo Chloé Perlemuter qui, avec un dispositif volontairement réduit, a décidé d’épouser le regard du spectateur, furtif, parfois inquisiteur et parfois distrait. Quelques regards sur les chanteurs en coulisses, des cadrages audacieux, rompent la monotonie d’un spectacle assez statique où l’investissement se lit presque exclusivement sur les visages, ce que soulignent parfaitement de pertinents gros plans. La captation offre donc au travail minimaliste et pudique de Jonathan Miller une profondeur supplémentaire, comme elle offre d’autres perspectives au décor d’une sobriété monacale d’Isabella Bywater, également signataires de costumes chatoyants qui nous renvoient directement au siècle des Lumières.

Mozart’s darkest operatic masterpiece with a superb cast featuring Renée Fleming and Bryn Terfel, masterfully conducted by James Levine with Franco Zeffirelli’s beautiful staging.
Bryn Terfel, giving his first Don Giovanni at the MET, received rave reviews for both his singing and his dramatic performance – as the Los Angeles Times puts it: “Terfel is exquisite as the Don, raping and pillaging his way through Europe: His voice, diction and acting are perhaps the best in the role since Cesare Siepi.”

Superlatives don't do justice to this priceless and incomparable collection of duets by opera's two most charismatic singers, whose interpretations are brimming with nuance only the truly gifted could capture. However pleasing Cecilia Bartoli's renditions of Cherubino and others in Mozart Arias, the depth of Susanna's emotional life that Bartoli conveys has yet to be even imagined by other sopranos, as she rips through opera's boundaries, creating her very own Fach and threatening the jobs of soubrettes the world over. Once she and Bryn Terfel draw you into their world of stellar, multidimensional creations, there's no escape from pleasure; in their talented hands, recitative becomes as interesting as any aria.

The music in this collection, inspired by religious thought and liturgical text, has been selected in honor of Pope John Paul II's visit to Paris in August of 1997 to celebrate Mass as part of the Worldwide Days of Youth. Much of the music here is very familiar to even casual listeners to classical music. From J. S. Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," to a rousing version of "Hallelujah" from Handel's 'Messiah,' this CD plays like a greatest hits of church music from the last 400 years.