Most Essential Christmas music: The Essential Mozart DVD Box

Just in time for Christmas, MediciArts offers a DVD box with a collection of Mozart's compositions. Performed by the very best instrumentalists, orchestras, conductors and singers, this representative selection comes at an attractive price. The recordings bear witness to one of the most extensive musical projects in recent years, when, in honour of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 250th birthday on 27 January 2006, EuroArts had arranged for high profile live transmissions from famous concert venues in Europe and Asia in the mammoth TV event 24hours Mozart. The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under Manfred Honeck performed compositions by Mozart in the beautiful historical Estates Theatre in Prague. Each of the works on the disc is in some way related to the city: the Overture to Don Giovanni, which was famously premiered by the composer in the Estates Theatre, the "Prague" Symphony, which Mozart intended as a greeting to the city that he cherished and the marvellously melodic Clarinet Concerto - premiered in Prague just a few weeks before the composer's death - played on the basset clarinet by the remarkable Sharon Kam. The second DVD captures an all Mozart concert by the Kammerorchester Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach with its musical director Hartmut Haenchen in the Konzerthaus Berlin. The chamber orchestra, often praised for its transparent renderings and technical precision, brought the music's light-heartedness, songlike lyricism, drama and inspired polyphony to life. Before their ...