Martin Fröst - Mozart: Ecstasy and Abyss / 2CD set

Musical maverick Martin Fröst’s most ambitious Sony Classical release yet sees him as both clarinetist and conductor, joining soloists Lucas Debargue (piano), Ann Hallenberg (Mezzo-Soprano) and Elin Rombo (Soprano) and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, of which he is chief conductor, in a double-album of masterpieces capturing the paradox of Mozart’s fragile existence and extraordinary creativity.

Each of the release’s two albums focuses on a moment in Mozart’s life when the composer appeared to teeter on a knife-edge between triumph and disaster, joy and depression, life and death. It was these moments that brought the music of the most extraordinary beauty and intensity from the composer. Included are Mozart’s sublime Clarinet Concerto, his simmering Piano Concerto No 25 (soloist Lucas Debargue), his joyous Prague and Jupiter symphonies and sparkling arias from the opera’s La clemenza di Tito (with Ann Hallenberg) and Idomeneo (with Elin Rombo).

The first album takes its inspiration from a concert Mozart gave in Leipzig in May 1789, a difficult moment in his life marked out by personal, financial and creative pressures. The second album focuses on the composer’s triumphant visit to Prague in August 1791, an ostensibly far happier period. Both albums capture the combination of playfulness and profundity, light and shade, brilliance and tragedy that characterized so many moments in Mozart’s life and career - the dichotomy that sets his best music apart.

This release marks Fröst’s recorded debut as a conductor, while he directs the orchestra in his third recording of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto from the Basset Clarinet, the variant instrument for which it was written. Martin Fröst is chief conductor of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and frequently appears with the world’s most distinguished orchestras. In 2014, he became the first clarinetist to win the prestigious Léonie Sonning Music Prize.