Mozart: Gran Partita (SACD)

For over four decades Pinnock’s name has been virtually synonymous with the early-music movement and, with a critically acclaimed Deutsche Grammophon discography of almost all the composer’s orchestral works, Mozart. He inspires fantastically insightful performances of two favourites by two Classical masters performed here on modern instruments with the very best of the next generation of wind players: the Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble. The ‘Gran Partita’ is Mozart’s largest and arguably his most innovative instrumental work; it demonstrates the sensitivity of the colours of wind instruments in a score of unsurpassed variety. The driving principles are sonority, colour, texture, concertante effects, the juxtaposition of contrasting styles, and the mutability of musical ideas. Pinnock brings his wealth of experience to his first recording of the composer’s great wind masterpiece. The nocturnes of Mozart’s mentor Haydn magnificently blend the timbres of strings and woodwind with unerring dramatic instinct. The work has all the scintillating argumentativeness and wit that one might expect of mature Haydn, whilst the central Adagio is sublime.