Manchester Camerata

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata & Gábor Takács-Nagy – Mozart Piano Concertos 11, 12, & 13 (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:38 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

The three concertos featured on this album were composed together in 1782 / 83 – shortly after Mozart had left his patron and position in Salzburg to establish himself as a freelance composer and performer in Vienna. The concertos were all performed by the composer in a series of subscription concerts that he gave in the city. All share the same form – opening movement in sonata form, slow movement in ternary form, and a bright rondo finale. Despite these similarities, though, each piece has its own distinct character and identity; such was the extent of Mozart’s genius for invention. Although formally scored for strings with wind, horns, trumpets, and timpani, Mozart also offered them to his publisher to be performed ‘a quatro’ – for strings only. These would be the last concertos he wrote in which this would be possible, and it is certainly likely that it reflected a need to earn greater income as opposed to being a purely artistic decision. As in the rest of this series, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is joined by the Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, who open the album with a dazzling performance of the Overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which dates from the same period.

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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata & Gábor Takács-Nagy – Mozart: Piano Concertos Vol. 8 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:26 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Volume 8 of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s survey of Mozart’s piano concertos with Gábor Takács-Nagy and Manchester Camerata features two late concertos – Nos 26 and 27 – along with the overtures to Così fan tutte, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), and La clemenza di Tito. Concerto No. 26, the ‘Coronation’, was completed in 1788, premièred in Dresden, and then played at the coronation of Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor, in Frankfurt, on 15 October 1790. As Mozart did not prepare the score for publication, large sections of the left hand were left blank in the manuscript score. It’s not known who created the part for the first printed edition, although this has been widely accepted ever since. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has created his own version for this recording. Mozart premièred his final piano concerto, No. 27, in Vienna on 4 March 1791, in his last public performance. The album was recorded in Manchester’s Stoller Hall, Bavouzet playing a Yamaha CFX nine-foot Concert Grand Piano.

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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata, Gábor Takács-Nagy – Mozart: Piano Concertos, Vol. 4 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:08 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

This third volume in the series from the electrifying combination of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Manchester Camerata under Gabor Takacs-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 Kochel 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 flat and D, adding in another letter, two weeks later, I consider them both to be concertos which make one sweat. Heard in this context, Bavouzets playing is all the more astonishing.
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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata, Gábor Takács-Nagy – Mozart: Piano Concertos, Vol. 3 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:03 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

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.
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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata, Gábor Takács-Nagy – Mozart: Orchestral Works (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:05:12 minutes | 2,10 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s acclaimed series of piano concertos by Mozart reaches its fifth instalment. Concertos Nos. 5, 6, 8, and 9 are complemented by the overtures to Il sogno di Scipione, Lucio Silla, La finta giardiniera, Il re pastore, and Zaide.

That all of these works were composed by Mozart between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five serves as a vivid reminder of his unique talents as a child prodigy: these are not childhood efforts but mature works. The Fifth Concerto was actually Mozart’s first, as Nos 1 – 4 are arrangements of works by other composers. As in the previous volumes, Bavouzet is partnered by Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, all recorded in The Stoller Hall in Manchester.
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