Beloved worldwide, Chloe Chua returns to PENTATONE with Mozart’s complete violin concertos – a project that began when she was just 15 years old.

The "Esterhazy Music Collection" is a series dedicated to presenting musical treasures largely forgotten over the centuries. It pays tribute to one of the most important Hungarian noble families, the imperial princes of Esterhazy. From the 17th to the 19th century, the Princes of Esterhazy were as generous patrons of the arts as the most influential rulers of France, England and Austria. Although the titles 'Le Matin', 'Le Midi' and 'Le Soir' have favoured the popularity of the three works in our time, they served Haydn merely as an inspiring impulse to compose. Haydn's symphonies 6 -8 (the 'Times of Day' symphonies) are programmatic music only to a limited extent.

The year after J. C. Bach arrived in London he published three sets of works, among them this set of "Favourite Overtures". All but one of them had been heard in the King's Theatre, where he served as resident composer. Only one, the first on this disc, prefaced an opera of his own, Orione; Nos. 2, 4, 5 and 6 were written for pasticcios produced at that theatre between summer 1762 and early 1763, while No. 3, as far as we know, was not known in London, making the title "favourite" seem a little optimistic (it had been written for an opera heard in Turin in 1761). Being opera overtures, and essentially products of his Italian period, they are rather lighter in content and manner than most of J. C. Bach's music.

Composed in 1771 to a libretto by Metastasio tracing the well-known biblical story of Judith and Holofernes, La Betulia liberata was Mozart’s first oratorio. Often described as a stroke of genius, this recording by Les Talens Lyriques and Christophe Rousset, with Sandrine Piau, Amanda Forsythe and Teresa Iervolino, shows the dramatic intensity of which he was already capable at the age of just fifteen and the influence of his early experiences with opera.

The recent Kozeluch revival, featuring recordings of his solo, chamber and orchestral music, has demonstrated his status as one of the most important figures in the whole of Viennese Classicism. This double album dedicated to Kozeluch’s works for fortepiano four-hands provides further confirmation of his compositional mastery, on a level bearing comparison with his contemporaries.

Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre present a new recording of Mozarts Mass in C Minor, the iconic opening Kyrie of which is among the most cherished religious music ever written. Mozart performed parts of the Mass in 1783, but the score remained unfinished, making the use of a scholarly edition necessary for a complete performance. Despite its unfinished state, Mozarts Mass in C Minor has gained popularity and now enjoys a place in the choral core repertory. For this recording, made in connection to live performances, Minkowski has chosen Helmut Eders 1985 edition for the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe.

Written between 1818 and 1823, Beethoven's Missa solemnis was the result of intensive theological and musical research in the library of it's dedicatee, Archduke Rudolph of Austria. It is, in Beethoven's own view, his most ambitious composition. On this recording, René Jacobs shows us that it is also his loftiest. This is the work of a composer with deeply held religious sentiments and profound tenderness for humanity, so confident in his artistry that he could create that which goes beyond liturgical form and expresses in musical terms the universality of divine transcendence.

The three piano trios by Leopold Kozeluch recorded here are from 1786 and 1787 and were initially published independently by their composer. Already a few months later, however, reprints appeared in Paris, London, Offenbach, Mannheim, and Speyer – which shows just how well known and popular his music was at the time. Even before, in 1781, Kozeluch enjoyed such a fine reputation that the Archbishop of Salzburg offered him the post of court organist, succeeding Mozart. The piano trios on this recording for the most part display a mirthful and relaxed character, with spirited joy of performance along with virtuosic design sometimes holding sway in the piano part.

Thomas Erskine, the 6th Earl of Kellie was Scotland's most colourful and exuberant 18-century composer, known on his estates as 'Fiddler Tam'. His music includes Mannheim symphonies, songs, string quartets, trio sonatas, and a strathspey & reel. This recording features his extravagant orchestral fireworks, and his intimate chamber music recorded in his Fife home, Kellie Castle.

Giovanni Antonini has been recording the complete symphonies of Joseph Haydn with the Alpha label for more than five years. Now the series is enriched by another monument by the Austrian composer: Die Schöpfung (The Creation), recorded in 2019 with the Bavarian Radio Chorus and his own orchestra, Il Giardino Armonico. This great oratorio was inspired by those of Handel, which Haydn heard performed by very large forces during his visits to England. The Creation, composed between September 1796 and April 1798, demanded such a colossal effort of him that he even fell ill just after its first performance; but the work enjoyed immense success.

Fabio Biondi has chosen a selection of delightful virtuoso chamber music pieces by Niccolò Paganini to mark his tenth album for Glossa. Together with his long-term colleague from Europa Galante, the plucked-string specialist Giangiacomo Pinardi (here playing an original romantic guitar from c1825), Biondi delivers one of the most special Glossa albums of recent times. The works, composed between 1804 and c1828, are mainly two-movement sonatas contained in the Centone di sonate collection, although the album also includes the popular Sonata concertata in A major.

How did Mozart hear his own music at home in Salzburg? This recording provides the answer, as it was made not only in the house in which he lived but also with the clavichord that he used to compose Die Zauberflöte, La clemenza di Tito and the Requiem. While its keyboard has the same five-octave range as the fortepianos that Mozart used for concerts, the clavichord's weaker sound limited it to domestic use, to be heard by family members who happened to be present or collaborators. Baritone Georg Nigl and early keyboard specialist Alexander Gergelyfi have devised an intimate programme of arias, overtures, cantatas, Lieder, fantasias, rondos and even the poignant Lacrimosa from the Requiem. This unique album lets us enter Mozart’s own house in Salzburg, where we can sit next to an instrument he himself played and listen to two exceptional performers, both of whom are irrevocably smitten with the genius loci.

This ninth volume of the Haydn2032 series focuses on the composers psychological subtlety in its focus on a central work: his Symphony no.45, known as the Abschieds-Symphonie (Farewell Symphony), composed in 1772. It is said to have got its nickname from a symbolic message Haydn conveyed to Prince Esterházy when he and his orchestra were required to stay longer than planned in the Princes summer residence. On the occasion of the symphonys first performance, Haydn had arranged for the musicians to leave their places one by one during the final Adagio.

Writers on Mozart sometimes take him to task for the alleged mixture of style in the C minor Mass, in particular the use of florid, 'operatic' solo writing amidst all the severe ecclesiastical counterpoint. To object is to misunderstand the nature of Mozart's religion, but it takes a performance as stylistically accomplished as this one to make the point in practice. The usual stumbling-block is the 'Et incarnatus', with its richly embellished solo line and its wind obbligatos. Sung as it is here, by Sylvia McNair, beautifully refined in detail, it's indeed passionate, but passionately devout.

Our Contemporaries of Mozart series with Matthias Bamert for Chandos counts over 20 CDs to date and is still on-going. The series has uncovered a wealth of previously unavailable eighteenth-century works and its success is illustrated by the numerous accolades bestowed upon it including a number of releases credited with Editor’s Choice in Gramophone. Composers featured include those more well-known from the era, such as Clementi, Salieri and Stamitz to the rarely-heard Gossec, Vanhal and Gyrowetz.