Guardian: Mozart 225: classical stars pick their favourite Wolfgang Amadeus wonder

[Frank Forman]

For me, it is the 39th symphony, his most enigmatic work. It marks his
finally coming into his own, breaking away from his father and from a
long-time patron, whose name I forget.

My favorite performance is the first one I owned, conducted by
Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt on an early stereo Mercury. I was surprised when I
bought it again, long after I had discovered the generally better
performances on 78s, and found that I was more moved by this later
recording.


Mozart 225: classical stars pick their favourite Wolfgang Amadeus wonder
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/dec/05/mozart-225-favourite-works-renee-fleming-brendel-marriner-uchida-levin-vonotter-pinnock-piemontesi

It's 225 years since Mozart's death, and there's a giant CD
collection to mark it featuring many of the biggest names in
classical music. We asked some of them to reveal which of his works
they love best

Monday 5 December 2016 07.08 EST

The year's biggest music release is surely a 200-CD box set
containing everything--or as near as possible--Mozart wrote,
released 225 years after the composer's death on 5 December 1791. We
asked a handful of the 600 stars who feature on the recordings to
pick their desert-island pieces.

RenГ©e Fleming (soprano)
I could never choose just one Mozart piece, but Idomeneo would be
near the top. I remember snagging a standing room ticket to hear
Anthony Rolfe Johnson in this opera. I heard humanity incarnate in
that music: leadership, goodness, and the meaning and use of power;
all wrought by Mozart aged only 24. As a Juilliard student the Da
Ponte trilogy at the Metropolitan Opera with the great singers of the
day left an indelible impression on me. Those works showed me what
opera could be--encompassing the full spectrum of human existence,
most especially the things that do not change. Who has matched
Mozart's brilliance in the Act II finale of Figaro, the soulful
distress of the Countess, and the bursting boyhood of Cherubino? Or,
in Cosi fan Tutte, the distinct musical portrayal of the loves of two
different couples?

Alfred Brendel (pianist, writer, poet)
The "Jeunehomme" piano concerto K271 is Mozart's first great
masterpiece. He was 21 when he composed it, and he was not a teenage
genius like Mendelssohn. It is as if his earlier concertos are by
another composer. Here, though, suddenly there is a structure and the
most wonderful ideas, formal ideas, and a vision of everything the
classical piano concerto could become, in subtlety and richness. For
me, it is a perfect work, with that special freshness of something
done for the first time and succeeding at the same time. I even find
that he did not surpass this piece in the later piano concertos.

Francesco Piemontesi (pianist)
I got to know the Sinfonia Concertante K364 by chance--at the end of
the Peter Greenaway film Drowning by Numbers one hears the whole
second movement accompanying the final sequence. I was transfixed by
the sonority Mozart brings out of the two solo instruments, by the
construction and the interplay of the musical phrases, the daring
harmonies and the orchestration, and the way these elements are
combined to create such a unique atmosphere. I can't think of another
composition of Mozart that moves me more deeply. Like the smile of
the Mona Lisa one never knows if the dark side of the piece actually
grins at you, and if the grief is at the same time a consolation.
Great masterworks often suggest many meanings but this one keeps on
telling me a different story every time I listen to it.

Anne Sofie von Otter (mezzo soprano)
For me, the Mozart eye- (and ear-)opener was Nikolaus Harnoncourt's
recordings of Idomeneo and the symphonies. What layers of drama,
passion, sensuality and wonder lie there waiting to be discovered!
Singing-wise, it was the role of Sesto in La Clemenza di Tito that
made me a Mozart fan. It's such a rich role musically speaking,
chunks of meaty recitative, with two of the most wonderful arias ever
written and plenty of ensembles. But ultimately my top prize goes to
Idomeneo with its orchestral colours and daring through-composition,
a beautiful, moving and very suitable drama to take to a desert
island.

Dame Mitsuko Uchida (pianist)
The Piano Concerto in C Minor, K491 no 24 has a mysterious, bleakly
dark grandeur. To me, it's clear he wrote the opening by twisting
around the opening of the Fantasy in C minor K475--it is so haunting
and shocking. Mozart uses the different emotional colours of the
winds very cleverly. That bleakness of the flute in the first
movement gives me shivers every time I hear it, while there are those
wonderful, almost warm-sounding clarinet sections in A flat major in
the slow movement, and then--the most amazing moment after all the
darkness--the way the C major variations begin in the oboe in the
Finale. The whole piece is so inspired.

Trevor Pinnock (conductor)
I was about 16 when I was transported to a new world by a recording
of Bruno Walter conducting three very contrasted symphonies by
Mozart: in G minor K183, A major K201 and C major K200. I now know
most of Mozart's symphonies so well that I would be happy to carry
them to a desert island in my memory, but for a musical postcard to
slip in my pocket I would take Mozart's Symphony in E flat K184.
Eight minutes of pure delight.

Robert Levin (fortepianist)
There are so many Mozart desert-island pieces (the terzettino from
Così fan tutte, the slow movement of the G major violin concerto,
Martern aller Arten from Die EntfГјhrung aus dem Serail, the slow
movement from the String Quintet K593 for starters) that the choice
of a single one is a cruel task. A different day, a different choice.
Today's is the middle movement of the A major concerto K488--the
only piece Mozart ever wrote in the desolate key of F sharp minor. A
more heartbreaking musical utterance is inconceivable, although
Beethoven rendered it full homage in the slow movement of his
"Hammerklavier" Sonata.

Sir Neville Marriner (the late conductor gave us his thoughts earlier
this year)
I'd name the rarely performed work, his sacred drama Die Schuldigkeit
des ersten Gebots K35, which embraces all the youthful charm of the
11-year old Mozart; but my favourite work: the Requiem. That Mozart
left it incomplete makes it all the more affecting. While the day of
judgment and hope for salvation are expressed in quite austere
idioms, it is music of such dynamism that you can understand its
place in the heart of most Mozart lovers, and forgive those composers
and editors who have tried to become part of this work with their
additions and subtractions. The fabric of the work is the essence of
Mozart--the composer who ultimately provides the most sophisticated
human emotional experience of all.