[SACD-R][OF] Mozart - Complete Sonatas for keyboard & violin, vol. 5 (Gary Cooper & Rachel Podger) - 2008 (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……..
The necessity of travel if a devotee of music somewhere between 1765 & 1780, happened to be doing his best to catch a glimpse of ‘wunderkind’ Mozart at work in his hometown of Salzburg, then he it is likely that he would have knocked in vain at the door of the Archepiscopal Palace. The young composer was probably on the road again. He had been employed (but without pay!) since the age of 9 as violinist in the Archbishop’s court orchestra where father Mozart also played; but Mozart spent half of his time travelling, usually accompanied by his father. Leopold Mozart was a man with a mission. He was convinced that the birth of his exceptional son was a miracle that had descended on him, & he saw it as his holy duty to introduce Wolfgang to the world. He pursued this aim with diligence. Right up to the painful moment in 1781 when Mozart moved to Vienna & set up as an independent creative artist, father Leopold remained his impresario, concert manager, & the driving force behind Mozart’s career. For years on end, Mozart travelled constantly throughout Europe, from Pressburg (Bratislava) to Paris, from Naples to London. Leopold arranged performances for the imperial family in Vienna, the Kings of France & England, & in the palaces of the religious & secular nobility of Europe. Mozart visited France on 3 occasions. During the great European tour as a little boy of 7 & 8, when he visited Paris with his family, he was idolized. Every nobleman’s palace right up to the King of France, opened its doors to him. But when he returned in 1778 with his mother, it was a very different story. Mozart went to France with dreams of settling in Paris as an opera composer. His old friend Gluck & the Italian composer Piccinni ruled the roost, but they stood at the heads of 2 warring musical factions. The friendly Baron Grimm, “to whom”, according to Leopold in 1764, “we owe everything”, was by no means as forthcoming as he had been 14 years ago. A 22-year-old Mozart was now only 1 among the many talented newcomers streaming into Paris. He was no longer the amazing 6-year old curiosity, full of musical tricks & spectacular surprises, who had enthralled an audience eager for something new. No; this time Mozart did not really feel welcome in Paris. To make things even worse, Wolfgang’s mother died in Paris on 3 July 1778. In a most moving letter, Mozart informed his father of her death: “Mon très cher Père…”. The family member to whom he felt closest was gone. She had been a sweet-natured woman, with an inherent joie de vivre & a sense of humour that kept everything on an even keel: fortunately she passed both characteristics on to her son……