Florian Deuter, Monica Waisman – Pocket Mozart (2022) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]

Florian Deuter, Monica Waisman – Pocket Mozart (2022) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]

While today it is easy to listen to almost any piece at any time and in almost any place, before the invention of the record it was quite complicated: you had to go to a concert or to the opera or you played yourself… In the emerging bourgeoisie, arrangements of the most popular works in instrumentations suitable for chamber music were popular and, of course, Mozart’s famous operas were at the top of the popularity scale. In many places, publishers set about transcribing Mozart’s works for small and very small ensembles. The two violinists Florian Deuter and Mónica Waisman have found a whole series of such contemporary arrangements of Mozart’s operas and piano sonatas in “pocket format” for violin duo, which bring the well-known melodies into the new form with much wit and finesse. In the process, the listener can grin and observe the reduction of the full sound and delve into delightful details of house music around 1800.

Collegium 1704, Vaclav Luks – Smetana: Má vlast, JB 1.112 (Live) (2022) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]

Collegium 1704, Vaclav Luks – Smetana: Má vlast, JB 1.112 (Live) (2022) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]

Bedrich Smetana’s cycle Má vlast is not only the culmination of his symphonic output, it also occupies a unique position in Czech music and conveys a very special message of national character for Czech society. “Sublime”, one reviewer called the remarkable live performance of Smetana’s Ma vlast by an extended Collegium 1704 during the Prague Spring Festival of 2021. The Czech ensemble played on period instruments and thanks to the Czech conductor Václav Luks, Smetana’s masterpiece is a “source of innovation, a living history that took listeners on a journey of pride and inspiration”. The album can only be described in one way: a must for every music lover.

Anton Steck, L’arpa festante, Matthew Halls – Beethoven, Pössinger: Violin Concertos (2016) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]

Anton Steck, L’arpa festante, Matthew Halls – Beethoven, Pössinger: Violin Concertos (2016) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]

Award-winning German violinist Anton Steck joins Matthew Halls and the Baroque chamber orchestra L’arpa festante on violin concertos by Viennese composer Franz Alexander Pssinger and his friend Beethoven. Steck presents the world premiere of Pssinger’s concerto, written in 1805, just one year before Beethoven’s popular concerto. It took Beethoven’s work more than three decades to conquer the concert hall, ultimately gaining its popularity through two printed revisions published in Vienna and in London, which both reveal substantial changes in the solo parts. The quest for Beethoven’s “original version” proves to be extremely complicated, as Beethoven himself offered up to four alternatives to the soloists in some spots of the manuscript. A study of the different inks and quills used in that autograph allowed Steck to propose the unusual version recorded here, a tangible and transparent rendering of a famous piece thanks to the use of historical instruments.