Mozart already had a passionate interest in opera from early childhood. During his travels throughout Europe, he came to know and love opera in all its forms -from opera seria to opera buffa and singspiel.  In addition to the fun-loving Mozart’s four operatic masterpices – The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and The Magic Flute, he composed a number of other operas including Der Schauspieldirektor. In this one-act comic opera, Mozart makes fun of the rival prima donnas. It was performed at Schönbrunn, on the same occasion as an opera by Salieri. In this album, the overture to Der Schauspieldirektor gives a spirited, positive, and stimulating introduction to the beautiful Piano Concerto no.25 that follows.

In 1784, Mozart began his Catalogue of all my Works. Between January 1784 and December 1786 Mozart composed 12 piano concerti, all of them masterpieces. Among them, Piano Concerto no.25 was composed for subscription concerts, or academies, that Mozart held during the winter months to earn a living. Mozart’s musical mind, as we know it, is abundantly evident in the first movement of this concerto and proceeds in an elegant and stately fashion to the second movement. With its beautiful, gentle, and lyrical melody, the soloist is echoed by the oboe and flute in an atmosphere of peacefulness and tranquillity. The third movement carries over the melody and brings us back to the majesty of the first movement and on to a joyous finale.

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no.3 was completed in 1800 at the start of the period of Beethoven’s more heroic works. It was the first to illustrate the highly personal characteristics of Beethoven’s compositions which ignored many conventions of virtuoso concerti fashionable at the time. That this work points forward to his later style is evident in the first movement with its two greatly contrasting themes which become the accelerating factor of dramatic conflict. The highly imaginative instrumentation of the Largo movement and the complete integration of the piano into the orchestral context give this movement classical beauty and depth of feeling. The Rondo is a harmonically original, playful, and mischievous piece that leads this concerto into a festively vigorous finale.