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| Mozart: Gran Partita & Berg: Kammerkonzert | 
 enlarge | Artists: Mitsuko Uchida, Christian Tetzlaff
Creators: W. A. Mozart, Berg, Pierre Boulez, Ensemble Intercontemporain
Label: Decca
Category: Music
List Price: $16.98
Buy New: $10.03
You Save: $6.95 (41%)
New (33) Used (7) from $10.03
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 25743
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 001224802
UPC: 028947803164
EAN: 0028947803164
ASIN: B001DHUJK0
Release Date: November 11, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | Largo--Allegro molto | | • | Menuetto--Trio I--Trio II | | • | Adagio | | • | Menuetto (Allegretto)--Trio I--Trio II | | • | Romanza (Adagio)--Allegretto | | • | Tema con variazioni (Andante) | | • | Rondo (Allegro molto) | | • | I. Thema Scherzoso con variazioni | | • | II. Adagio | | • | III. Rondo ritmico con introduzione |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Album Description
Vienna's 18th- and 20th-century musical worlds meet on this new CD of chamber music. Mozart and Schoenberg are a delightful and enlightening pairing of the first and second Viennese schools. Though classical 18th-century chamber music would seem to have little in common with 20th-century atonal music, the two pieces are more closely related than one might expect. Both include a choir of 13 instruments (the Berg also includes solo piano and violin parts) and both refer to the same musical structures. Boulez and Uchida, two of the great intellectual and musical minds of our time, meet for this new recording. They previously collaborated on the 2001 Gramophone Magazine Award Winning recording of Schoenberg's Piano Concerto paired with solo piano works by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern.
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| Customer Reviews:
 READ GREGORY LOSELLE's EXCELLENT REVIEW January 4, 2009
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Thanks Greg fora excellent , NO HYPE review, No lies like most (99%) of all amazon reviews...lies...your's is spot on...i do not own this cd,,,thanks to the few clips offered...what lifeless, cold, playing on the Mozart and the Berg clips offers nothing over the other Boulez recording....
You can tell by the cd cover photo, all 3, Boulez, Tezfal, UchidAAAA, are standing around, looking as if they have nothing better to do THAN TO TRY TO MAKE SOME $$$'s recording a cd...Boulez says *hey you 2 guys,,,want to mkae a CD??*...*Sure papa Pierre*...anytime a photo of the performers is on the front cover,,,you can bet its going to be a dud, bomb,,,and sure enough this time as well, DUD!...LASTLY,,,what gives this cd away that its a bomb is the fact the 2 pieces (composers) chosen are from 2 totally different styles...JUST WHAT WAS BOULEZ THINKING!!???...Time for Pierre to lay up his baton. ...His 2nd viennese recordings are spectatular, 1st rate,,,but alas his time has to come to PASS HIS BATON TO NEW YOUNG FRESH BLOOD...LET SOMEONE ELSE MAKE A LIVING...he has enough $$$ in the bank...a bit greedy is you ask me...and I hope Pierre reads my comments...I really hope he does..
paul Best
New Orleans
(I expect 100% found this review NOT helpful),,(notice no one believes Greg told the truth,)
Jan 4,2009
 Boulez takes a mostly genial view of both works, with enjoyable results December 10, 2008
The 'Gran Partita' Serenade K. 361 is the most recorded of Mozart's three great wind serenades, and it flourishes best under a conductor -- with so many movements, one longs for a point of view and for the kind of contrast that a great conductor provides (Furtwangler, Klemperer, and Stokowski all made notable recorings). Boulez takes a streamlined, frankly unsentimental view, an approach aided by the fairly thin, piquant Parisian woodwinds of his Ensemble Intercontemporain. More to the point, he varies the mood wthin each movement, so we don't get a uniformly lush, burgeoning sound, which is what wind groups always resort to, since each soloist wants to shine on his own.
True, the opening movement scants Mozart's richness and depth -- it feels a bit impatient -- and the finale breaks all speed records, but the whole is engaging and vivacious. A Gran Partita this light on its feet can't help but be welcome, unless you expect Viennese Gemutlichkeit, which isn't much in evidence. The players are all good, and so is the recorded sound, even if a bit flimsy on the bottom end.
For many lovers of Mozart the Berg Chamber Concerto will be a bitter pill, and there's no doubt that it poses daunting challenges if you try to follow its harmonic logic analytically. It would take super-ears to keep up. But if you tune in creatively, listening for passing moments of color and mood, this work has a wealth of delightful touches. Boulez's approach isn't jagged or angular, either -- he seems as genial as in the Mozart -- which is another plus. Uchida and Tetzlaff add star power (particularly her), so there's a sparkle in the playing that renders the work much less dry, if one is tempted to think of abstract 12-tone music that way.
In short, the Berg can be turned into an enjoyable experience if you let it, and the Mozart is bottled sunlight. Highly recommended.
A magnificent combination December 1, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Previous reviewers have been unnecessarily harsh about this remarkable new release. Part of the appeal here is the prospect of hearing Pierre Boulez in his eighties (but conducting with more vigour than most 20 year olds) working with a group of truly first class musicians.
The result is a magnificent combination of Mozart and Berg. As one would expect, these are beautiful but unsentimental performances, exquisitely balanced, full of detail, with plently of rhythmic vigour, The tempi in Mozart's glorious Gran Partita are on the quick side but not exceptionally so. What is most impressive is the sense of structure - Mozart's perfect forms come across with great clarity: the famous Adagio travels its sublime arc in one effortless sweep; the variations are also a model of lucidity and charm; the finale, which can sometimes sound a bit stiff, dances along with panache. In general, the marvellous richness of Mozart's score (with its wonderful basset horns) may sounds less romantic than in many performances, but it communicates with freshness and urgency. If you want a recording to listen to in your slippers with a glass of sherry this may not be the one - Boulez is not a slippers and sherry kind of octogenarian.
The pairing with Alban Berg is imaginative and exciting. Berg is certainly the most Mozartean of the Second Viennese School - like Mozart, he had a genius for writing opera and like the older composer, his music is as playful as it is lyrical. The Chamber Concerto is an intricate work in which Berg plays some of the most complicated structural games imaginable. It is worth pointing out that relatively few conductors dare to tackle the piece because it's textural layers and the density of its counterpoint looks so baffling in the score. Few works are more challenging to play or to listen to but Boulez, Uchida and Tetzlaff, along with members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, play the work with enviable ease, communicating its extraordinary emotional range from post-Mahlerian nostalgia to expressionistic nightmare to an almost Post-Modernist sense wit and irony. This is an exceptional disc of two Viennese masterpieces, intelligently coupled together.
 Trampled Sublimity in the Mozart November 23, 2008
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
Noting that my original review here was not considered helpful by 5 out of 6 readers, I am rewriting it to get straight to the point: if you are thinking of buying this CD primarily for the Mozart, forget it. (I am reviewing only the Mozart.)
Ensemble Intercontemporain fails to realize the depth of the Mozart Gran Partita. Yes, there are many parts of this serenade that are lighthearted and jovial; and I appreciate the sense of fun that this performance brings to those sections; however, the players should begin the piece with a sense of awe and wonder in anticipation of the great journey it is about to undertake through a full range of human emotions from profoundly contemplative to jocular. It should even hint at the uncertainty and trepidation that one feels as he or she leaves his/her comfort zone to begin a long trip. Or, to change the metaphor, the musicians should convey a slight degree of reticence as if approaching a person of great eminence. Instead, they just plunge in coarsely as if nothing of great moment were about to occur, capriciously applying a liberal serving of staccato. I am not sure if staccato is indicated in the score; but even if it is, many wiser musicians have chosen not to shorten the notes too much. The group also speeds through the music, letting the notes fly by and thus losing many wonderful details.
Other movements pass by superficially, with too much attention to musicologically correct, but heartless, execution of grace notes. The first of the great slow movements would normally send the Mozart lover into ecstasy; but this group prevents that with their chirpy phrasing. To hear the serenade played as the great composition that it is, listen to the Netherlands Wind Ensemble: Serenade in B-Flat Major: Gran Partita (Hybr). They achieve the depth of the slow and moderate movements and yet fully project the high spirits of the fast sections.
Dry and cold, however good the playing November 22, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
There's nothing new to pairing a classical-era work with a modern-era one, and this disc would at first seem to have a winning combination: Berg is consciously writing in the neoclassical vein of the Second Viennese School, in reflection on (if not imitation of) Mozart. These two should be, by rights, speaking to each other. And it IS a good combination, but the experience of listening to these dry and thin-sounding performances is irritating; the acoustic of the studio renders a very bright and sharp sound, making the instruments seem strangely distant from each other, and the overall textures are bare and harsh. Certainly Mozart didn't intend a sound as overtly 'analytical' as this (not in a serenade, a form comprised of dance-like movements), and Berg--who was, after all, a Viennese composer trained during Romanticism's last gasp--must have envisioned a more lushly fulsome color palette.
The forces here--Uchida, known for a bright sound in her famous Mozart recordings; Tetzlaff, whose training as a mathematician has often been cited in his chilly and exact performances (I once heard him play a Paganini concerto in a performance that seemed to suck the air out of the room); and Boulez, the Last Modernist Standing--all seem intent on producing a recording of disconnected soloists, a precise account of these works, but not a lively or warm one.
Neither the Gran Partita, which does not seem to include the famous soloists, nor the Kammerkonzert really achieve a life of their own here, and we're left with an account of both that's full of technical interest but inert and without warmth.
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