Mozart: Piano Concertos No. 23 & No. 27 (Live) Menahem Pressler, Magdeburg Philharmonic & Kimbo Ishii

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791):
• 1 Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488: I. Allegro 12:34
• 2 Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488: II. Adagio 06:53
• 3 Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488: III. Allegro assai 09:48
• Claude Debussy (1862-1918):
• 4 Preludes, Book I, L. 117: X. La Cathédrale engloutie 03:17
• Frederic Chopin (1810-1849):
• 5 Nocturne No. 20 in C Sharp Minor, Op. Posth. 04:41
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
• 6 Piano concerto No. 27 in B-Flat Major K. 595: I. Allegro 15:21
• 7 Piano concerto No. 27 in B-Flat Major K. 595: II. Larghetto 09:17
• 8 Piano concerto No. 27 in B-Flat Major K. 595: III. Rondo. Allegro 10:53
• Frederic Chopin:
• 9 Mazurkas, Op. 17: IV. Mazurka in A Minor 05:07
• Total Runtime 01:17:51

Info for Mozart: Piano Concertos No. 23 & No. 27 (Live)

“…..Pressler has played Mozart’s piano concertos with such frequency that they can be reckoned among the works that have occupied him the most in his life. Fortunately, a wish that Pressler and the musicians of the Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra had been having for many years finally came true: in May and December 2016, Pressler performed as a soloist in his home town. In May he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto in B Flat Major K595, and in December he played the Piano Concerto in A Major K488. On the subject of Mozart, he remarks: “In Mozart there are no ‘empty’ passages. Musicians often just ‘play through’ a passage because they can play it well, and they are satisfied with that. However, if the interpretation of a passage has no content, I become adamant. I know it’s hard to phrase everything correctly. But I am still as critical as I ever was. First of all toward myself, then toward my co-performers.” Fortunately these concert performances in May and December 2016 were recorded. For a performer who had then reached the age of 92 (and who celebrated his 93rd birthday on the occasion of the second Magdeburg concert on 16 December 2016), one can hear that those aforementioned daily hours of practice have truly been worth the effort. Pressler, the experienced musician, phrases the piano part with unmatched nuance. In the framework of moderately chosen tempi he masters every technical hurdle in each of these two masterpieces. Most of all, one can immediately tell that we are dealing with a pianist who not only knows very note of these concertos, but who has made each of them his own. Although Pressler has recently made several recordings on CD, these Mozart concerto recordings might be the last recorded testimony of one of the great performers of our time……” (Excerpt from the Liner Notes)

Menahem Pressler, piano
Magdeburg Philharmonic
Kimbo Ishii, conductor

Kimbo Ishii
is currently continuing into his fifth season with Theater Magdeburg as General Music Director. During his five seasons at Theater Magdeburg he has conducted the premiere-productions of, "Lucia di Lammermoor", "Der Freischütz", "Jenůfa”, ”Madame Butterfly", "The Tales of Hoffmann", "The Abduction from the Seraglio", "Kiss me, Kate", "Tristan and Isolde", "Macbeth", "Der Rosenkavalier", "Così fan tutte" and "La Bohème". On the concert platform he has conducted numerous symphonic concerts.

During his tenure at the Komische Oper Berlin (KOB) from 2006-2008 where he was active as Principal Conductor (Kapellmeister), he conducted performances of "The Marriage of Figaro", "Don Giovanni", "The Magic Flute", "Fidelio", "The Barber of Seville", "Rigoletto", "Turandot", "Die Fledermaus", "The Bartered Bride", "Le Coq d'or" and two productions of Zemlinsky operas, "The Dwarf" and "A Florentine Tragedy". While still under the baton of Ishii conducting the coveted orchestra concerts and premiere-productions, the productions of "L'enfant et les sortilèges" and "The Tales of Hoffmann" became one of the most popular productions at the Komische Oper Berlin for seasons.

Ishii has served as Music Director to various Orchestras, during 2007-2012 he was made Music Director of the Amarillo Symphony, while from 1999-2007 he was Music Director with Cayuga Chamber Orchestra and he also served as Principal Guest Conductor from 2009-2013 with the Osaka Symphony Orchestra in Japan.

He has been conducting orchestras throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas such as the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bochum Symphony (Germany), the Deutsche Kammerorchestra (Berlin), the Kammerakademie Potsdam (Germany), the Manchester Camerata (England), the Silesian Philharmonic (Poland), the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, the Sønderjylland Symphony Orchestra (Denmark), the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Japan), New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra (Japan), the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, the China Broadcast Symphony, the Shanghai Symphony, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, the Skaneateles Festival Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica and Orchestra Philharmonika de Lima (Peru).

In this season 2014/15, he is making his debut with the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mecklenburgische Staatskapelle Schwerin and the Orchestra UniMi in Milano.

His festival activities include conducting at the Kusatsu International Music Festival in Japan from 1996-1999, a guest faculty appointment at the C.W. Post Chamber Music Festival, and two Conducting Fellowships at the Tanglewood Music Festival. For several seasons he was Cover Conductor with both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic where he had assisted world-class conductors such as Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, Bernard Haitink, Sir Simon Rattle, James Conlon and Yakov Kreizberg.

Other career highlights include several NTV concert broadcasts with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, and his CD recordings conducting with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, The Camerata Schulz, the Kusatsu Festival Orchestra and the Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ishii's internationally renowned conducting teachers have included Chosei Komatsu, Michael Charry, Seiji Ozawa, and Sir Simon Rattle. He received his Master's degree in Conducting from the Mannes College of Music.

He also studied violin with Walter Barylli at the Conservatory in Vienna after years of training in Japan with Yu Kazaoka, and continued his violin studies with Dorothy DeLay and Hyo Kang at the Juilliard School of Music.

Ishii was a prizewinner in Denmark's Nikolai Malko International Conducting Competition in 1995. He was awarded the George & Elizabeth Gregory Award for Performance Excellence (New York Arts Foundation) in 1996, and in 2010 he was also bestowed the "Hideo Saito Memorial Fund Award" (Sony Music Foundation), in which its entire prize money has been donated to the Tokyo Junior Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Magdeburg Philharmonic
is the opera and concert orchestra of the birthplace of Georg Philipp Telemann and is distinguished for premières including Wagner’s Das Liebesverbot, Albert Lortzing’s Undine, Eugène d’Albert’s Tiefland (in the 1905 revised version), Kurt Weill’s Der Silbersee and Violeta Dinescu’s Effi Briest. In the course of its history the orchestra has collaborated with renowned conductors, including Richard Strauss, Hermann Abendroth, Bruno Walter and Hans Pfitzner. The legacy of Wagner and Strauss plays an important part in the repertoire of the orchestra, the general music director of which, since 2010 has been the Taiwanese Kimbo Ishii. The orchestra and conductor have a close association with the pianist Menahem Pressler. Recordings by the orchestra include works by Alexander Zemlinsky, Béla Bartók, Jaan Rääts, Gustav Mahler, Dmitry Shostakovich, Hans Werner Henze (the last honoured with the 2005 German Record Critics Prize), Brahms, and Wagner as well as the first German performance of Zdeněk Fibich’s opera Die Braut von Messina.

Booklet for Mozart: Piano Concertos No. 23 & No. 27 (Live)