Artist: Mozart
Titul: LOpera Rock (Dove Attia & Albert Cohen)
Date of realise: 2009
Style: Rock-Opera,Classical
Tracks:27
Audio/Quality: mp3 | 320 kbps
Size:200 MB

Whatever the merits of sets made since, this one is ensured a revered place in the pantheon of Figaro recordings. Made in 1968, when Bohm was enjoying an Indian summer, it was based on a production by Sellner at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and indeed the production was supervised by Sellner. Since its premiere under Bohm in 1963, he had led many revivals including some performances with this cast, around the time the recording was made, which surely accounts for this sense of a true ensemble felt all round and of a thought-through interpretation. The crisp, clear, yet spacious recording, seldom matched on more recent versions, only enhances the authority and warmth of the reading. Bohm radiates the wisdom of his years of attendance on the score without any slackening of his rhythmic grip or his demand for precision of execution. It was also part of Bohm’s genius to weld a heterogenous cast into a convincing whole. No need at this stretch of time to commend the singers individually; each has complete command vocally and dramatically of his or her role though one must just mention Janowitz’s dignified yet lively Countess and Mathis’s animated, alluring Susanna.

Seemingly out of nowhere comes a complete recording using original instruments of Mozart’s piano concertos that knocks the competition out of the box. It is extraordinarily fresh and alive, up on all the latest musicological evidence without ever making it sound affected or stylized (just stylish!), recorded in beautiful clear sound, and featuring an extraordinary pianist named Viviana Sofronitzki whose father was the great Russian virtuoso Vladimir Sofronitzki. (...)