In honor of the 225th anniversary of Mozart's death at the age of 35, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, and the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation have together issued a whopping 24-lb box of recordings and commentary called Mozart 225. Billed as the most complete and authoritative edition of Mozart recordings ever assembled, the $480 box, in an edition limited to 15,000 copies worldwide, includes 200 CDs with 240 hours of music.
As you can see here, the contents amount to every completed work by Mozart, including the Handel and Bach arrangements; over 100 fragments, completions by other composers, and works of doubtful attribution; 30 CDs of alternate performances, including some on authentic period instruments and/or of historic import; and a number of world premiere recordings, including over two hours-worth of new recordings on the very instruments that Mozart played. We've got the world premiere of a long lost song (K477a) written in "friendly competition" with Antonio Salieri (who did not kill Mozart), the first recording of Sonata K331 with Rondo "alla turca" from the recently discovered autograph manuscript, played by Francesco Piemontesi, and a brand new disc from period-instrument ensemble Accademia Bizantina and Ottavio Dantone. There are even five "exclusives," although these are, in all but one case, either short movements or fragments.
The box's four long trays of thin, paper slip-cased CDs, each of which includes a book of content listings, will happily fit on your shelf once they are removed. In addition, the box includes two illustrated hardback books, including a new Mozart biography by Cliff Eisen and a second book that offers work-by-work commentary. If you're into numbers—after all, you will have to put a few of those together to buy the thing—those essays and commentary amount to 120,000 words. Then there are 5 frameable prints, a new thin-papered booklet listing the numbering in the new Köchel catalogue, a complete performer index, and, yes, an iPhone/iPad Libretto App that will allow you to access and even download all opera libretti and access authoritative urtext (original/earliest) scores of the online edition of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (New Mozart Edition).
If somehow seeing this all spelled out on a YouTube trailer will make the box more tangible, please go for it. From my critical perspective, the happiest thing about the trailer is discovering that its fragment of the unforgettable "Sull'aria" duet between Countess Almaviva and her co-conspirator/maid Susanna, from Le nozze di Figaro, is done slowly, in the most sublime way imaginable, rather than in the rushed manner that has become fashionable among many modern and "authentic performance practice" interpreters. Happily, the box includes both the zip-zip, no-lingering-here, period-instrument recording by Arnold Östman and the Drottingholm Court Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, with Arleen Auger and Barbara Bonney singing beautifully albeit with no trace of lingering romance, and the "supplemental" (hah!) 1955 recording by Erich Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Choir—the very first complete stereo recording of the opera—in which Lisa della Casa and Hilda Gueden duet exquisitely. Thank goodness for alternative performances.
We don't get alternatives to the other operas, alas. The Don Giovanni, for example, finds Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra zipping along as Joyce DiDonato does one of the best imitations of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's Donna Elvira hysteria on record. The cast is very fine, but the recording as a whole cannot equal Carlo Maria Giulini's unforgettable account on Warner. Even if it not the top recommendation, Claudio Abbado's Die Zauberflöte with Dorothea Röschmann and René Pape is nothing to sneer at. And there are any number of supplemental "insertion arias," period instrument aria excerpts, and aria excerpts done by everyone from Montserrat Caballé and Janet Baker to Jonas Kaufmann. For unforgettable "classic" aria recordings set down earlier than the 1950s, however, you must go elsewhere (or come to Port Townsend and take my class!).
The good news is that the music has been drawn from 20 labels in toto, 18 of which are not part of Universal Classics, and that the artists are almost all universally admired. For Mozart lovers who invested in the 1991 Philips Mozart Edition, the fact that 70% of those recordings are not included in this edition is a major plus. That doesn't necessarily mean that the newer choices are better, of course. Far less of an incentive to purchase, from an audiophile perspective, is that none of the early digital recordings or early digital masterings of analog recordings have been remastered.
The bottom line is this. No compilation this vast could possibly be perfect, let alone please all parties. If you agree that the music of Mozart is far more indispensable than Game of Thrones, and you have the time to indulge several times per week, this set will sate your Mozart appetite for a good five years or more. Supplement it with the occasional must-listen new performance, especially if it's a period-instrument alternative, and at least one of your longings will be fulfilled. Maybe.
If somehow seeing this all spelled out on a YouTube trailer will make the box more tangible, please go for it. From my critical perspective, the happiest thing about the trailer is discovering that its fragment of the unforgettable "Sull'aria" duet between Countess Almaviva and her co-conspirator/maid Susanna, from Le nozze di Figaro, is done slowly, in the most sublime way imaginable, rather than in the rushed manner that has become fashionable among many modern and "authentic performance practice" interpreters. Happily, the box includes both the zip-zip, no-lingering-here, period-instrument recording by Arnold Östman and the Drottingholm Court Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, with Arleen Auger and Barbara Bonney singing beautifully albeit with no trace of lingering romance, and the "supplemental" (hah!) 1955 recording by Erich Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Choir—the very first complete stereo recording of the opera—in which Lisa della Casa and Hilda Gueden duet exquisitely. Thank goodness for alternative performances.
We don't get alternatives to the other operas, alas. The Don Giovanni, for example, finds Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra zipping along as Joyce DiDonato does one of the best imitations of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's Donna Elvira hysteria on record. The cast is very fine, but the recording as a whole cannot equal Carlo Maria Giulini's unforgettable account on Warner. Even if it not the top recommendation, Claudio Abbado's Die Zauberflöte with Dorothea Röschmann and René Pape is nothing to sneer at. And there are any number of supplemental "insertion arias," period instrument aria excerpts, and aria excerpts done by everyone from Montserrat Caballé and Janet Baker to Jonas Kaufmann. For unforgettable "classic" aria recordings set down earlier than the 1950s, however, you must go elsewhere (or come to Port Townsend and take my class!).
The good news is that the music has been drawn from 20 labels in toto, 18 of which are not part of Universal Classics, and that the artists are almost all universally admired. For Mozart lovers who invested in the 1991 Philips Mozart Edition, the fact that 70% of those recordings are not included in this edition is a major plus. That doesn't necessarily mean that the newer choices are better, of course. Far less of an incentive to purchase, from an audiophile perspective, is that none of the early digital recordings or early digital masterings of analog recordings have been remastered.
