PETER SCHMIDL, WIENER PHILHARM

Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 39-41

Symphony No. 39 in E flat major, K543
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K550 (2nd version)
Symphony No. 41 in C major, K551 'Jupiter'
Kammerorchester C.P.E Bach, Harmut Haenchen

In the last 34 years, Hartmut Haenchen has “made interpretative history”, in the judgement of the influential Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, with his Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Chamber Orchestra. All the symphonies of his orchestra’s “founding father” have been recorded and issued on CD and restored to the concert repertoire, while the ensemble's entire repertory includes numerous rediscoveries through the great classics into the modern era. Hartmut Haenchen and his musicians have given over 120 concerts in Berlin without remuneration, in order to awake renewed awareness of Berlin’s musical history.

On May 1, 2014, this era reached its definitive end, and the chamber orchestra and its artistic director bid their Berlin audience farewell in the Konzerthaus with the last three symphonies of W.A. Mozart. The musicians rose to the occasion by drawing on the depths of their shared experience as an ensemble, striking a great closing chord in these climactic works of Mozart’s symphonic oeuvre. This is the live account of a farewell full of joy and sorrow, imbued above all with a sense of artistic fulfilment. Clemens Haustein summed up the occasion in the Berliner Zeitung:

“Haenchen and his musicians gave each of the three works its own individual sound (...) Sweetly and clearly it was performed, with a sense of proportion as well as an eye to dramatic effect. (...) Seldom do we hear that from the great symphony orchestras ‐ whether from a shortage of rehearsal time, or from a lack of stylistic flexibility. Nor, sad to say, shall we hear it again from the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Chamber Orchestra. That is a crying shame. We are left with more than 50 recordings on disc.”

That discography now closes with the recording of this farewell concert.