[SACD-R][OF] Mozart - Complete Sonatas for keyboard & violin, vol. 4 (Gary Cooper & Rachel Podger) - 2007 (Classical/Chamber/Piano/Violin)

Microphones: Bruel & Kjaer 4006, Schoeps
Digital Converters: DSD Super Audio/Meitner Design AD/DA
Speakers: Audiolab, Holland
Software: Pyramix Editing, Merging Technologies
Mixing Board: Rens Heijnis, custom design
Mastering Room: B+W 803d series speakers, Classe 5200 Amplifier
Cables: Van den Hul

The duo partnership Gary Cooper & Rachel Podger has taken them worldwide. These recordings of Mozart’s Complete Sonatas for Keyboard & Violin have received countless awards & accolades, including multiple Diapason d’Or awards & Gramophone Editor’s Choices, & hailed as ‘benchmark’ recordings.
“Finally, one asks why there hasn’t previously been a complete recording on historical instruments. From my ‘privileged’ position as listener-in-chief, I can tell you it is because no pair can make such transparent & difficult music sound so effortless, elegant, witty, emotionally persuasive & enjoyable.
~ Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, producer.
Anyone thinking of Mozart as a performer probably imagines him at a harpsichord or fortepiano, an accurate picture. Mozart was a gifted keyboard player, but not a showman of the keyboard. He detested empty virtuosity. Wolfgang, however, had been trained from his earliest years by his father Leopold as a double talent. He played both harpsichord & violin. The popularity of his sonatas, variation sets, & concerti for the piano has tended to overshadow his violin compositions, but the 1st sounds that his baby ears received probably came from his father’s violin. Wolfgang heard him tuning the instrument, saw him putting on new strings now & then, playing, rehearsing. He heard Leopold praising his violin & commenting on the music. Until Wolfgang moved to Vienna in 1781, the sound of the violin had accompanied him virtually every day of his life, for Leopold had been with him almost constantly……..
On 18 November 1763, Leopold Mozart, his wife, & his 2 children arrived at the 1st station on the grand European tour which they had started in Salzburg on 9 June of that year. Their support & refuge in the French capital was Baron Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1723-1807), a Regensburg-born diplomat & litterateur who was employed in Paris as secretary to the Duke d’Orléans. Grimm turned out to be Mozart’s staunchest advocate in Paris, not only on the occasion of this first visit but again in 1766, & to a lesser extent in 1778. Together with several friends from the Encyclopédistes, Grimm published a biweekly bulletin Correspondance Littéraire, devoted to cultural & particularly to literary matters, which he sent to a number of the seats of the nobility in Germany & Northern Europe. In this bulletin, Grimm also reported on the spectacular appearances of Salzburg’s wunderkind, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart. When he arrived in Paris, Leopold Mozart only had a couple of simple piano compositions to show to Grimm; Leopold himself had written them down in a notebook belonging to his daughter Nannerl (1751-1829). But only 2 months later, the 1st printed works by Wolfgang would make their appearance. On 1 February 1764, Leopold, bursting with pride, wrote to the wife of his friend Lorenz Hagenauer in Salzburg: “At this very moment, 4 of Mr. Wolfgang Mozart’s sonatas are being engraved for printing. You can well imagine the excitement which will be occasioned in the world by these sonatas, when people see on the title page that they are the work of a child of 7.” As early as 1 December 1763, or less than 3 weeks after the family’s arrival, Grimm was filling his bulletin with praise for Wolfgang’s talent in improvisation & composition: “What is truly unbelievable, is to see him play without any music before him for a full hour at a time, & to surrender himself completely to the inspiration of his genius, & to a wealth of enchanting inventions, which he can link together with perfect taste & without any confusion. The most seasoned Capellmeister could not have any more profound understanding of harmony & the modulations, with which he can travel the most unfrequented routes, always with the greatest correctness. He writes & composes with wondrous ease, without needing a harpsichord to work out his chords.” …..