Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante in Eb Major for violin and viola*, K364 (1779)

1 Allegro maestoso

2 Andante

3 Presto

 

Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major K218 (1775)

4 Allegro

5 Andante cantabile

6 Rondo: Andante grazioso – Allegro non troppo

(cadenzas: Vengerov)

 

Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 2 in D Major K211 (1775)

7 Allegro moderato

8 Andante

9 Rondo: Allegro

(cadenza: Vengerov)

 

Maxim Vengerov (violin and director)

UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra / *Lawrence Power (viola)

 

“Mozart offers the greatest instrument to express ourselves and to learn about others. His music is there when speech fails. There is God, and there is Mozart.”  Maxim Vengerov

 

EMI Classics is proud to announce the first in a series of releases featuring Maxim Vengerov’s electric interpretations of the complete Mozart Violin Concertos. The repertoire from this particular release was performed with the young UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra at the BBC Proms last August with the Financial Times calling Vengerov “outstanding”, whilst The Independent remarked that “his super-refined sound and sweetness at the top of the instrument were, as ever, awe-inspiring.”

 

Mozart wrote his five violin concertos in his home town of Salzburg between 1773 and 1775 when as a teenage composer and violin soloist he was rapidly rising to the peak of his powers as a purveyor of sublime melodies.

 

Maxim Vengerov describes Concertos 2 & 4 featured on this release, both written in 1775 within the space of a few months. “The Second and the Fourth violin concertos are in the same key (D major), but they are so different, have such different messages. The Second is minimalist, it’s experimental writing but it creates magic. It’s a dialogue, an intimate conversation. It’s opera without words.”

 

Four years on, as a mere 20-year-old, Mozart returned to writing for the violin as concerto soloist for the last time in the soul-searching Sinfonia Concertante which completes the repertoire on this disc. This piece sees the young composer firmly on the road to maturity; it includes one of the most moving Andante movements of Mozart’s entire output - a heartfelt elegy on the recent death of his mother earlier in 1779. In this piece Maxim Vengerov is joined by the young British viola player Lawrence Power, who is rapidly taking his place alongside such eminent artists as Yuri Bashmet and Tabea Zimmermann as a world-class viola soloist.

 

Vengerov appears for the first time on disc as director - guiding the orchestra from the violin. Without the addition of a conductor there is a real intimacy in the interpretation of these pieces which makes it a particularly special recording. 

 

Recorded: February 9-11 2006 at Henry Wood Hall, London (Concerto 2) and August 15-18 2006 at Salle Métropole, Lausanne (Concerto 4, Sinfonia Concertante). Producer: John Fraser

 

EMI 3783742