Mozart 225 is a bumper collection for all Mozartians, which surely means most lovers of classical music. Universal Music Classics is marking the 225th anniversary of his death, and the 260th of his birth, with its second Complete Mozart Edition in 25 years.
The first, marking the bicentenary of his premature demise at 35 from an illness still unknown, was largely drawn from the now-defunct Philips back catalogue, with a little help from Deutsche Grammophon. The new 200-CD set (mozart225.com) is lavishly packaged, with two hardback books, one on the life by Cliff Eisen, the other on the works by a roll call of the best-known Mozartians, including Anna Amalie Abert, Alec Hyatt King, John Warrack, Nicholas Kenyon and Stanley Sadie, but it replicates only a third of the recordings in the Philips edition.
The names of Neville Marriner, Colin Davis, Alfred Brendel and Arthur Grumiaux have been superseded — though not completely banished — by a preference for more recent scholarship and period instruments. Marriner’s famous, if sometimes bland, accounts of all the symphonies have largely been jettisoned in favour of a handful of period practitioners, the lion’s share of the early works deriving from Trevor Pinnock’s English Concert set on Archiv, with a handful from Christopher Hogwood’s Academy of Ancient Music and one disc’s worth, comprising the “Paris” (K297/300a), B flat major (K319) and C major (K338), from John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists.
Mozart’s crowning symphonies, the great G minor (K550) and the “Jupiter” (K551), are entrusted to Frans Brüggen’s Orchestra of the 18th Century, whose expressive intensity and momentous elan match, for me, the best “old school” Mozartians such as Georg Szell, Otto Klemperer or Davis. For those not totally wedded to period bands, there are performances of the last two symphonies on modern instruments by Sandor Vegh’s Camerata Academica Salzburg, which are as exhilarating as Brüggen’s.
I’m less thrilled by the dominance of Robert Levin and Malcolm Bilson in what I suppose we must call the fortepiano concertos. They join forces for the Double Concerto (K365) and add Melvyn Tan for the Three Piano Concerto (K242). Although the texts are assuredly more “authentic”, I’m not sure how often I would want to listen to their performance, though happily Mitsuko Uchida, Brendel, Andras Schiff, Maria Joao Pires, Daniel Barenboim and the brilliant young Dutchmen the Jussen brothers feature prominently among the Supplementary Performances.
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Eisen’s potted biography — 123 pages, sumptuously illustrated and bound — is an ideal companion, full of insights into Mozart and the most up-to-date scholarly information about his life. He is particularly interesting on the relationship between the young Wolfgang and his father, Leopold, which some writers have perhaps interpreted too psychologically, without much documentary evidence. That Mozart was a greater genius than his father — which the latter clearly knew — should not blind us to Leopold’s skill in training his son in the fundamentals of the art he was to master in his maturity. And he dispels a lot of the Mozart “mythology”, a timely service when Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, largely based on those myths, is again introducing nonspecialist audiences to his music at the National Theatre.
In his introduction to the box, Paul Moseley confesses that “the choice of opera recordings... presents the largest challenge”. He has gone for admirable variety — Georg Solti (Così fan tutte), Claudio Abbado (Die Zauberflöte), Charles Mackerras (La clemenza di Tito), Yannick Nézet-Séguin (Don Giovanni), Gardiner (Idomeneo) and Arnold Ostman (Le nozze di Figaro) — but I’m not convinced that these are all top choices from the Universal catalogue. Solti’s later recording of Così, for example, with Rénee Fleming and Anne Sofie von Otter as the sisters, has been preferred to the earlier, in my view finer one with Pilar Lorengar and Teresa Berganza. Gardiner’s Idomeneo, though, sweeps all before it. I’m sorry his Tito set was not included, too.
The additional discs of highlights include classic performers such as Margaret Price (Donna Anna), Frederica von Stade (Cherubino), Fritz Wunderlich (Tamino) and Kurt Moll (Sarastro). Erich Kleiber’s complete recording of Figaro represents the postwar Viennese Mozart style at something like its best, featuring Cesare Siepi’s saturnine Figaro, Lisa Della Casa’s dreamy Countess and Hilde Güden’s sparkling Susanna.
Gardiner’s still world-beating accounts of the C minor Mass and D minor Requiem (in the standard completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr) continue to hold pride of place here, supplemented by new editions (by Richard Maunder and HC Robbins Landon). The latter’s edition of the Requiem is the 1991 performance conducted by Solti in Vienna’s Stephansdom on the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death (his house is around the corner), and starring Arleen Auger, Cecilia Bartoli and René Pape.
Already Universal is claiming 1.25m disc sales for Mozart 225 in the first month since its release. That works out at 6,250 collection sets, impressive for a box set that retails for about £325. You also get facsimile prints and a canon to his patron Gottfried von Jacquin, with a postscript in English: “Don’t never forget your true and faithfull friend, Wolfgang Amadè Mozart.” It’s impossible not to be moved by this, from “the greatest composer known to me, either in person or by name”, as Josef Haydn declared to his proud father.
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The highlights
1 Symphonies Nos 40 and 41 Magisterial accounts from Frans Brüggen’s period Orchestra of the 18th Century.
2 Idomeneo John Eliot Gardiner’s 1991 recording has not been bettered on disc. With Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Sylvia McNair and Hillevi Martinpelto as a fiery Elettra.
3 Divertimento in E flat for String Trio, K563 Almost 50 years old, the Grumiaux Trio’s performance is a classic version of a too rarely heard masterpiece.
4 Piano Concerto No 27 in B flat, K595 The combination of Clifford Curzon as soloist and Benjamin Britten as conductor, from 1970, remains irresistible.
5 Mass in C minor Sylvia McNair’s ethereal Et incarnatus est and Diana Montague’s virtuosic Laudamus te are just two highlights of Gardiner’s unmatched performance.
6 Ch’io mi scordi di te Cecilia Bartoli and Andras Schiff join forces in Mozart’s farewell gift to his first Susanna, Nancy Storace, on her departure for London: his greatest concert aria with piano obbligato.