Description:

The fourth in the BELVEDERE label's series of live performances of the "Mozart Week" music festival is a live concert from 2000. --In this gorgeous evening, soprano Barbara Bonney, accompanied by Previn at the piano, presented a program of Mozart, Previn, and R. Strauss. Bonney's beautiful lyric soprano and Previn's ever-changing yet consistently soft touch on the piano were superb. The cello work by Previn, featuring Franz Bartholomei, principal cellist of the Vienna Philharmonic, is also noteworthy. Mozart's German-language cantata, which opens the concert, sounds like a wake-up call to the international political situation of our time. Desire is the common theme of the works by the three composers. In Mozart's work, dreams, longing for spring, and the desire to be loved are sung. Previn describes the desire to end discrimination; the R. Strauss work sings of the longing for love as an existence that transcends this world. Barbara Bonney, Previn, and Franz Bartolomei beautifully recreate the feelings these composers expressed in their works. This is a piece that is a joy to listen to.