Maddalena Del Gobbo / Robert Bauerstatter / David Pennetzdorfer / Ewald Donhoffer MADDALENA AND THE PRINCE

“Join me in dipping into the world of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, who was known as “the Magnificent”, and his beloved music. The baryton, the instrument on this album, is also magnificent: six (gut) strings to be bowed, nine or more resonating strings (made of metal), a carved head atop the neck, delicate ornamentation and a noble, graceful sound.

Maddalena and the Prince: the prince being Nikolaus Esterházy as well as the noble instrument – in my opinion the baryton is the “prince” of instruments, which can produce the loveliest and most charming sound and whose appearance alone makes hearts leap.

The thrill of recording these works in the Haydnsaal of the Esterházy Palace, drinking in the atmosphere of this magical location while playing, was an unforgettable experience for me and one for which I am truly grateful.I hope that you will be charmed by the baryton in this recording!”

Maddalena Del Gobbo is the artistic patron of Scandinavian Cello School, a foundation that supports, promotes and educates young cellists. This is a project she holds close to her heart and she will donating a portion of her royalties of this album to the foundation.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet / Manchester Camerata / Gábor Takács-Nagy MOZART Piano Concerto KV 466 - Piano Concerto KV 467 - Overture to "Don Giovanni" KV 527

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s first three volumes of Mozart concertos with the Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy have been received with widespread acclaim, and so it is with some excitement that we release the keenly anticipated fourth instalment in the series.

Composed within just one month in early 1785, these two concertos by Mozart are among the most popular of all his piano concertos. No. 20, KV 466 was his first concerto in a minor key, and its dark and stormy nature contrasts with the light and sunny atmosphere of Concerto No. 21, KV 467.

Like so many of his piano concertos, both works were composed for the Vienna concert season and were given their premiere performances with Mozart at the keyboard.

The two concertos are interspersed on this recording with a vivid performance of the Overture to Don Giovanni, which shares traits with both concertos and further demonstrates the exemplary playing of Manchester Camerata.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet / Manchester Camerata / Gábor Takács-Nagy MOZART Piano Concerto KV 450 - Piano Concerto KV 451 - Quintet for Piano and Winds KV 452

This third volume in the series from the electrifying combination of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Manchester Camerata under Gábor Takács- Nagy explores the final two of the six piano concertos of the year 1784, on which Mozart staked his reputation as both a performer and composer. Alongside these works features the pioneering Quintet for Piano and Winds, also from 1784, the first written for this combination of instruments and a work which Mozart regarded as his finest to date. The consecutive Köchel numbers of the three piano works hint at a remarkable story: not only were they all written in the same extraordinarily productive year, but all were completed in the same month, March, when Mozart was just twenty-eight years old. The two concertos form a pair, and in letters to his father Mozart makes it clear that he wrote them for his own performance: ‘nobody but I owns these new concertos in B flatand D’, adding in another letter, two weeks later, ‘I consider them both to be concertos which make one sweat’. Heard in this context, Bavouzet’s playing is all the more astonishing.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet / Manchester Camerata / Gábor Takács-Nagy MOZART Piano Concerto KV 449 - Piano Concerto KV 459 - Divertimento KV 136 - Divertimento KV 138

The effervescent and communicative energy of Bavouzet and Takács-Nagy is encapsulated again in this second volume of their Mozart series. These exhilarating interpretations of Mozart’s piano concertos of 1784, faultlessly supported by the Manchester Camerata, follow highly praised concerts as well as a first volume which was ‘Editor’s Choice’ in Pianist.

The two concertos presented here are among the six that Mozart composed in Vienna in an extraordinarily productive year. As Bavouzet states in an exclusive personal note, they ‘share their association with operatic and symphonic styles. The contrasts of mood in their first movements and the cantilenas which serve as second movements relate them more closely with music for the operatic stage, while their finales are conceived in purely instrumental terms and make reference to the symphonic domain. On the other hand, these two works are complete opposites as far as their use of wind instruments is concerned. In KV 449 their inclusion is ad libitum, whereas they very often play the principal role in KV 459.’

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet / Manchester Camerata / Gábor Takács-Nagy MOZART Piano Concerto KV 453 - Piano Concerto KV 456 - Divertimento KV 137

After demonstrating their ‘innate love and understanding of Haydn’s music in performances of the expected vivacity and insight’ (BBC Music – CHAN 10808), Bavouzet and Takács-Nagy, the latter conducting his Manchester Camerata, now explore Mozart’s extraordinarily prolific year 1784 in this new series.

Two of the six concertos composed that year are heard here, each unusual for having been written by Mozart for another pianist and for featuring a central Andante, instead of the more common Adagio.

This is a unique version that, as Bavouzet stresses in his booklet note, ‘although played unequivocally on modern instruments, contrasts with those versions made not so very long ago, which used a large orchestra incorporating sixteen violins and eight double-basses’. He adds: ‘a versions which also will take into account a number of performing practices current in Mozart’s time, such as the use of a solo quartet to accompany certain well-defined passages in which the piano is predominant. A version which in one way or another aims to link tradition and modernity.’

Jasper String Quartet THE KERNIS PROJECT: DEBUSSY

This album marks the culmination of our decade-long journey with Aaron Jay Kernis’s music for string quartet. From the moment we put bow to string for Aaron’s Second Quartet, we realized his special voice and our connection to his music’s ability to capture both the complexity of the world and the simplicity of a moment. This depth fascinated us, inspired our playing and prompted us to dream of commissioning Aaron’s Third Quartet.

Six years later, after performing and recording his first two Quartets and organizing the commission, we received the first movement of his Third Quartet “River”. As the movements accumulated in our inbox, so did our sense of excitement and dread. It was clear that this piece surpassed its two preceding quartets in complexity and difficulty. The route forward was clear enough, but still daunting. Practice, rehearse, repeat. Through the spring and into the summer the piece started to take shape. Coalescing first a little at a time – glimmers of cleverness, brilliance, atmosphere amid the musical and technical challenges. As those moments grew to sections and then movements that began to make sense, we started to build them into the larger arc. (Aaron Jay Kernis)

Joseph Shiner / Somi Kim / Yoanna Prodanova BRAHMS Clarinet Trio - The Clarinet Sonatas

Joseph Shiner and Somi Kim perform the last chamber works ever written by Brahms: his Clarinet Sonatas, heard here alongside his sublime Clarinet Trio, for which they are joined by cellist Yoanna Prodanova. Brahms was so enchanted by the playing of clarinettist Richard Muhlfeld that he came out of retirement in order to write four chamber works for the soloist. Three of those works are featured on this album, interpreted by the exciting up-and-coming clarinettist Joseph Shiner, with Somi Kim at the piano and, for the Trio, cellist Yoanna Prodanova. As so often in Brahms’s paired works, the two sonatas have contrasting characters, the second gentler than the first, although both are highly nuanced, balancing taut structures with expressive, often wistful lyricism. The Trio is an expansive piece which includes in its first movement a theme originally intended for what would have been Brahms’s Fifth Symphony.