"When I play piano, the visible subsides.
An inexplicable fascinating world of sounds unfolds,
whose myriad powers of expression
I am privileged to channel."
Franz Vorraber

Endearing, that is Franz - a nice man with a wonderful Austrian charm and esprit. Chatting to us after the concert, how did he put it: "Playing Mozart in the monastery church with its acoustics is, for me as artist, an unique experience and unlike any concert hall, be it the Philharmonie in Cologne or the Gewandhaus in Leipzig". This is what makes Vorraber's performance correspondingly lively and elegant, his Mozart interpretations being stamped with an enormous passion and a wealth of suspense, without losing even one moment of Mozart's crystal clear, scintillating piano sound. Thus, the piano concerto's documented in this recording are, de facto, some of the most beautiful performances in our small piano concerto series in this edition and, in my opinion, the most faithful to Mozart's genius.

Josef-Stefan Kindler

Mozart wrote the Piano Concerto in B flat major at the age of twenty, apparently for his own usage. It belongs to one of the six Salzburg Concertos that Mozart wrote while in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg and is noted for its extremely personal form of expression, its almost symphonic phrasing and its fusion of musical humour and pathos. Of all the concertos, the Piano Concerto in C major is the one closest to the Jupiter Symphony. Of the 27 concertos for piano and orchestra the maestro wrote, the C major Concerto, KV 503, is one of the longest and the most symphonic. It is the last of the twelve so called "Vienna Concertos", which Mozart wrote in an almost inhuman burst of creativity in the space of merely two years, the first being the E flat Concerto, KV 449. The score was completed on 6 December 1798 and, in the same winter, Mozart presented the work to the public in performances in Vienna and Prague The concerto took place within the historical context of the war with Turkey and the pre-revolutionary unrest in France. With this backdrop, the theme from the last movement should be noted; it anticipates the beginning motif of the Marseillaise.

Born in Graz - Austria, Franz Vorraber has been fascinated by the piano since his early childhood. At the age of seven, he played the organ in church standing up - as he could hardly reach the pedals. At the age of thirteen, he was admitted to the piano class for exceptional students at the Music Conservatory in Graz, also learning the violin. The Viennese School in the tradition of Bruno Seidlhofer and the traditional German school of Wilhelm Kempff, handed down by Joachim Volkmann, dominated his study years. He has won many prizes for his skills on the piano. Here, just some of the awarders: the Austrian Culture Minister, the piano manufacturers Bösendorfer in Vienna and the city of Graz. He also won the Joachim Erhard prize. He completed his studies in Frankfurt and Graz receiving unanimously the highest awards. His greatest project has been the cyclical performance of Robert Schumann's complete piano works in a total of twelve evenings in different cities in Europe and Japan. The press and the public have repeatedly acclaimed him as one of the most important interpreters of Schumann in our times. He has recorded these works on a series of thirteen CD's for which he was awarded Austrian Broadcasting's Pasticcio prize in 2006. Despite all these prizes, other criteria are pivotal in Franz Vorraber's concerts: his enormous expressive force as a musician and his ability to expose the essential core of the music fascinate his public. He leaves his listeners emotionally moved. Since his debut in Tokyo at the age of 19, he has received many invitations to almost all the European countries, America and Japan, where he also holds master classes.

Further information and projects at www.vorraber.com

Morten Schuldt-Jensen (born 1958) studied choir and orchestra conducting as well as singing and vocal education at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen and holds an MA in musicology from the University of Copenhagen. In addition to numerous performances with international orchestras, he has been the conductor and artistic director of the Leipzig Chamber Orchestra and the choral director of the Gewandhaus in Leipzig since 2000 and professor at the Music Conservatory in Freiburg since 2006.

Further information and projects at www.musarc.de/msje.htm

In the more than a quarter of a century of its existence, the Leipzig Chamber Orchestra has achieved international fame with its diverse program conception Its repertoire comprise three centuries of European and international music development. Since its formation, the Leipzig Chamber Orchestra has performed numerous series of concerts at the Gewandhaus, has played in many musical centres in Germany and has been a guest at many international music festivals. Concert tours have taken it to almost all the European countries as well as many visits to Japan, Korea and the United States.

Further information and projects at www.musarc.de/lko.htm

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)
Piano Concerto No. 6 in B flat major, KV 238
1. Allegro aperto
2. Andante un poco Adagio
3. Rondeau - Allegro

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)
Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, KV 503
4. Allegro maestoso
5. Andante
6. Allegretto

The Series

Publishing culture in its authentic form entails for us capturing and recording for posterity outstanding performances and concerts. The performers, audience, opus and room enter into an intimate dialogue that in its form and expression, its atmosphere, is unique and unrepeatable. It is our aim, the philosophy of our house, to enable the listener to acutely experience every facet of this symbiosis, the intensity of the performance. The results are unparalleled interpretations of musical and literary works, simply - audiophile snapshots of permanent value.

The concerts in Maulbronn monastery, which we document with this edition, supply, in many ways, the ideal conditions for our aspirations. It is, above all, the atmosphere of the romantic, candle-lit arches, the magic of the monastery in its unadulterated sublime presence and tranquillity that impresses itself upon the performers and audience of these concerts. Renowned soloists and ensembles from the international arena repeatedly welcome the opportunity to appear here - enjoying the unparalleled acoustic and architectural beauty of this World Heritage Site (monastery church, cloister gardens, lay refectory, etc.), providing exquisite performances of secular and sacred music.

Under the patronage of the Evangelical Seminar, the Maulbronn Monastery Cloister Concerts were instigated in 1968 with an abundance of musical enthusiasm and voluntary leadership. Within the hallowed walls of the classical grammar and boarding school, existent for more than 450 years, some of society's great thinkers, poets and humanists, such as Kepler, Hölderlin, Herwegh and Hesse received their first impressions. The youthful elan, the constructive participation of the pupils, continuing the tradition of their great predecessors, constructs an enlightened climate in which artistic ambitions can especially thrive. Twenty-five concerts take place between May and September. Their success can be largely attributed to the many voluntary helpers from near and far.

Flourishing culture in a living monument, created for the delight of the live audience and, last but not least, you the listener, are the ideals we document with this series - directly in digital stereo.

Andreas Otto Grimminger & Josef-Stefan Kindler