[Complete Mozart Edition Torrent
Sharif Garmon
Each volume in the series is accompanied by a deluxe booklet with detailed information about the works, with many illustrations. Indicating the significance of this particular series, the words of the accompanying Compactotheque state, "...After the complete Shakespeare, the complete Goethe, or the complete Molire in book form, here is the Complete Mozart on discs."
A modified version of The Complete Mozart Edition, the Complete Compact Mozart Edition, was released in 2000. It consists of 17 individual boxed sets. This version also contains stripped-down versions of the booklets that accompanied the original series.
The Complete Mozart Edition and The Complete Compact Mozart Edition are both accompanied by a 200-page booklet which presents a condensed biography of Mozart with many photographs, describes in detail all boxes content and contains a complete index of all the musical works following the Kchel catalogue.
Philips had previously released a Mozart Edition, a series of 16 vinyl box sets issued in 1979. They purposely did not use the title of Complete Mozart Edition as it obviously was not a complete catalogue of his works. The series consisted of his main works only, although all of his operas, orchestral and chamber works were included. Due to the fact that it was released earlier than the Complete Edition, Philips did not have that many recordings at their disposal, and quite a few of the recordings in the Complete Edition were recorded specifically for it.[2]
The artwork for all 45 boxes was designed by Pet Halmen [de], directed by Estelle Kercher and photographed by Christine Woidich.[3] The designs focus on minimalism, with small objects that represent the music included in each volume (i.e. trumpet for wind music, piano for piano concertos, violin for violin sonatas and horn for wind concertos).[4] Miniature figurines and dolls were also incorporated, which were all brought together in the artwork of the final volume.[5]
The artwork for the Complete Compact Mozart Edition consisted of photographs depicting different architectural designs and details, taken by Matthew Weinreb throughout Austria, Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia.[6] The 180 disc box set containing all 17 volumes of the 2000 Edition features an upwards panoramic view of the interior of the Royal Opera House.[7]
In 2016, Decca and Deutsche Grammophon partnered with the International Mozarteum Foundation and issued a new edition of Mozart's complete works on disc, Mozart 225, to commemorate the 225th anniversary of his death. The edition was once the largest CD box set dedicated to one person in the world, until it was overtaken by Deutsche Grammophon's Karajan Edition. Consisting of 200 discs, it contains all of Mozart's known works, including those of fragmentary, doubtful or spurious status. It also contains two hard-back books: a biography written by the Canadian Mozart scholar Cliff Eisen and a guide to the music.[8]
There are many similarities and differences between the 1991 Philips Edition and Mozart 225. Decca and Deutsche Grammophon chose to use recordings from their own catalogue instead of from the old Philips one (which at that time had become joint with the Universal Music Group). For example, they used Trevor Pinnock's cycle of Mozart's symphonies with The English Concert, originally on the Archiv Produktion label. They did use a majority of the same recordings for the earlier operas (Leopold Hager's Deutsche Grammophon recordings), as well as many of his sacred works included in the 1991 Edition (with Herbert Kegel).[9]
The 2016 Edition also features many works that were not included in the 1991 Edition, such as his doubtful, spurious or incomplete works. One of the most significant discoveries was in the preparation for Mozart 225 when the German composer and musicologist Timo Jouko Herrmann discovered the cantata Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia, K. 477a, which until its discovery was considered lost. The authorship is attributed to both Mozart and the Italian composer Antonio Salieri, the man notoriously known as Mozart's "rival".[10] It received its first recording in 2016 by Claire Elizabeth Craig (soprano) and Florian Birsak (fortepiano), which was included in Mozart 225.
The publisher of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe is Brenreiter-Verlag Kassel (www.mozart-portal.de); The volumes of the printed edition can be ordered through specialized trade. You can obtain further information on the publisher's website(www.baerenreiter.com).
What are you doing for the next 10 days? That's how long it would take, without sleep, to listen to the new Mozart edition. The mammoth set, which some are touting as the biggest box set ever, claims to hold every note of Mozart's music and then some.
Released to commemorate the 225th anniversary of the Austrian composer's death, the box is dubbed Mozart 225: The New Complete Edition. Inside the 22-pound box are 240 hours of music (on 200 CDs, 30 of which feature alternate performances), two hardback books (a biography plus a piece-by-piece commentary), frameable Mozart prints and an updated Kchel catalogue, the intricately numbered directory of Mozart's music.
Cliff Eisen, author of the set's biography, is one of the key players behind the enormous box, which sells for about $400. A Mozart scholar and professor of music at King's College in London, Eisen spoke with NPR Music about the new edition and the life of the beloved but sometimes misunderstood composer.
Beyond Mozart's beautiful combinations of sounds, Eisen says he finds the music remarkably expressive. "The ebb and flow of the feelings and expressions," he says, "are so intense and concentrated and, at the same time, so honest about our day-to-day lives that the music is something that you can project yourself into."
Cliff Eisen: There are a number of differences between our box set and 1991 Philips set. We've included a lot more music, including unfinished pieces by Mozart, some sketches and a number of early pieces that have never been released on commercial recordings before. The other thing: People's listening habits and preferences have changed remarkably in the last 25 years.
Not only has the period instrument movement become the norm for the performance of the late 18th and early 19th-century music, but also, traditional orchestras have moved more in the direction of period instrument orchestras. They're taking over some of the results of historical performance practice research, like tempos, articulation and just the general sound being lighter and cleaner. So we're already in a kind of post-period instrument, hybrid way of listening. And that's reflected in the set by our inclusion of both period instrument and traditional instrument performances.
The early days of period instrument performances, I think most people now find those a bit dry and under-expressive, just because the idea was we would stick to exactly what's on the page. But as time went on and as people mastered period instruments, it was realized that this music could be much more expressive. Also just the sound. I think there was a realization that all of the instruments shouldn't blend so homogeneously the way they do in traditional orchestras. And so traditional orchestras have found ways to make individual groups of instruments, like woodwinds, sound different.
That's certainly the way I hear it. And I hear it that way because of my firm belief that a tremendous amount of what's being communicated is actually on the surface of the music. It's not the deep structures that are communicating to us. It's the sound that's on the surface. And that becomes alive in various ways. Then the really tricky stuff that Mozart does simply sounds more clear. It grabs your attention more.
I think that anyone who's really serious about their Mozart ought to buy it because it's actually a real bargain. But I also see it as a resource. I would hope that institutions would buy it, whether they're libraries or academic institutions. You get the whole history of Mozart performance and Mozart's compositional activity, including all kinds of things that have never been recorded before. When we started planning it, I did think of it already as being this kind of universal resource that someone who's really interested in late 18th-century music, or Mozart in particular, or music education, would find worthwhile.
Still, with all its completeness and all its alternate performances and recent discoveries and rare recordings it's still a pretty old-fashioned box set. Instead of being 200 CDs and books and frameable prints, why isn't it a 10-terabyte hard drive with on-screen simultaneous comparisons of performances, interactive scores and virtual reality experiences? Can you see that happening at some point?
At some point; I don't see it now. It may well be that this kind of venture is geared at old Luddites like me. You know, I like my CDs. I don't want to stream everything. I don't want to play everything through my computer.
I can see where this could evolve into the kind of thing that you're talking about. And it would be fabulous because I've done a couple of online Mozart projects, [including] an edition of the letters Mozart and his father wrote while they were in Italy between 1769 and 1773. The amount of ancillary material and visual material that I was able to bring in, it makes the letters come alive.
I'm very partial to Robert Levin's recordings of the Mozart piano concertos, which I think are great. I'm also really very fond of the opera performances by Arnold stman from the Drottningholm Court Theater because he seems to have quite an interesting, flexible view of 18th-century declamation.
You point out in the biography that comes with the box set that Mozart began composing just after the age of five. His very first compositions, little piano pieces, are included in the set. And how good are these early pieces?
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