Entitled Mozart Jubileum, this Ondine disc is a sort of Baltic Mozart's greatest hits compiled from six earlier releases on the Finnish label Ondine. That's alright: while the program is an unusual mixture of opera arias interspersed with movements excerpted from solo concertos, the strength of the performances makes the whole somehow greater than the sum of its parts. The performances are uniformly first rate, but some are better than others. Latvian mezzo soprano Elina Garanca's opening pair of Cherubino's arias from Le ...
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Entitled Mozart Jubileum, this Ondine disc is a sort of Baltic Mozart's greatest hits compiled from six earlier releases on the Finnish label Ondine. That's alright: while the program is an unusual mixture of opera arias interspersed with movements excerpted from solo concertos, the strength of the performances makes the whole somehow greater than the sum of its parts. The performances are uniformly first rate, but some are better than others. Latvian mezzo soprano Elina Garanca's opening pair of Cherubino's arias from Le nozze di Figaro are delightfully seductive, but Finnish baritone Jorma Hynninen's following pair of Don Giovanni's arias from the opera of the same name are tremendously powerful. After Finnish clarinetist Kari Kriikku delivers a wonderfully poised performance of the central Adagio from the clarinet concerto, however, comes the true high point of the disc: Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski's breathtakingly beautiful and amazingly affecting performances of arias from Zaide and Figaro....
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