With this recording, Jean Efflam-Bavouzet rounds off his complete cycle of the Mozart Piano Concertos, or, to put it more graphically 'a landmark five-year project pairing the Concertos with less familiar Opera Overtures. In the Concertos Nos 5-7 you sense Mozart already rapidly and consummately reaching out in a direction that was to find its truest voice in the Concerto No 9 in E flat K.271, the 'Jeunehomme' Concerto. But here, as Michael O'Loghin tells us in his detailed and exemplary essay, is evidence of a new musical horizon one that would replace the primacy of counterpoint with a simplicity or 'galant' style with a greater emphasis on symmetry and melody. Instinctively Mozart seized his opportunity investing his Johanne Christian Bach models with an increasing emotional depth. Far from a mechanical application of a formula, the path was set that would lead to the great Concertos to follow.
Mozart first visited Italy when he was fourteen and the four Overtures presented by the Manchester Camerata conducted by Gabor Takacs-Nagy all show a precocity that astonished his adult listeners and performers. Such was the success of the Overture to 'Ascanio in Alba' that the Overture to 'Mitridate, re di Ponto' quickly followed, Yet it is in the Entractes from ' 'Thamos, Konig in Agypten', set in ancient Egypt and his only example of incidental music for the theatre, that Mozart allows himself full reign through intense chromaticism colouring to achieve extreme emotion and drama.
All the performances on this disc are exemplary, the fruit of rich experience from Bavouzet with his characteristic vitality and commitment. His recordings for Chandos range from complete cycles of the Beethoven Concertos and Sonatas, complete Haydn Sonatas, complete Prokofiev Ravel and Bartok Concertos, complete cycles of the solo keyboard works of Debussy and Ravel and a Schumann recital while still finding time for the PIerne Piano Concerto This is an astonishing and seemingly never ending achievement with Mozart the jewel in a proudly worn crown.
Bryce Morrison