Mozart: Serenades - 'Haffner'

 
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W. A. MOZART
Mozart: Serenades - 'Haffner'
Kölner Akademie / Michael Alexander Willens, with Alexander Janiczek (violin solo)

[ BIS SACD / Hybrid SACD ]

Release Date: Friday 28 February 2020

This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.

Besides an acclaimed series of recordings with Ronald Brautigam of the complete piano concertos by Mozart, Mendelssohn and Beethoven, Kölner Akademie and Michael Alexander Willens are undertaking a survey of Mozarts serenades and other incidental works. Their first disc in this series included the Posthorn Serenade and demonstrated, according to the reviewer on MusicWeb-International, that the ensemble is amongst the best groups in the world of period performance'. Since then the team has recorded works associated with the Freemasons, and here takes on one of the most famous of the serenades, the Haffner, named after Sigmund Haffner, who commissioned it for the festivities surrounding his sisters wedding in 1776. A notable feature of Mozarts serenades and the large-scale Haffner is no exception is the incorporation of virtuosic solo parts, here performed by the violinist Alexander Janiczek. On the amply-filled disc (almost 86 minutes!), the at times quite imposing serenade is followed by Mozarts Musical Joke Ein musikalischer Spaß, K522. A work in four movements, this is a delightful and very skilfully crafted parody of musical incompetence. It is written for strings and a pair of horns, and its frequent caricatures of the second-rate whether in composition or performance are brilliantly observed, by Mozart as well as the present performers.

"Rhythms are nicely pointed, the phrasing elegant but never precious, and the ensemble sonority never turns crude in pursuit of "authenticity."...The engineering, as so often with BIS, is ideal." ClassicsToday

Tracks:

March in D major, K 249
Serenade in D major, 'Haffner', K 250*
Ein musikalischer Spaß, K 522