This exceptional production, shot in 1988/1989 on 35 mm film and directed by George Moorse, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and Klaas Rusticus, has been digitally remastered with the greatest care for high-quality audio and video restoration. The music of Mozart has been an essential driving force of Daniel Barenboim’s entire life. It remains central to his performing career both as a pianist and as a conductor. These illuminating performances of Mozart’s last eight great piano concertos admirably demonstrate Barenboim’s dictum that even when a true musician has already performed a familiar work hundreds of times, he or she ‘never accepts that the next note will be played the same way as it was played before’.

As part of the series Musique française : Découvertes 1890-1939, with pianist Stéphane Lemelin, ATMA Classique presents the Piano Quintets by French composers Louis Vierne and Gabriel Pierné. Pierné left 20 or so works of chamber music, including the Quintette en trois parties Op. 41, in E minor, for piano and strings, composed in 1916-17. This piece was dedicated to Gabriel Fauré, and premiered at the Société nationale de musique on February 22, 1919 by the Quatuor Bastide, with Gabriel Pierné on piano. In 1918, devastated and enraged by the death of his son, Louis Vierne wrote to his friend the organist Maurice Blazy: "I'm developing, as an ex-voto [a votive offering], a quintet of very large scale through which will flow abundantly the breath of my tender affection and the tragic fate of my child.

Scarlatti published just 30 of his 550 or so keyboard sonatas. They appeared in London in 1738/9 under the title Essercizi per gravicembalo ('Keyboard exercises'). In the preface he warned players: "Do not expect, whether you be amateur or professional, to find any profound intention in these compositions, but rather an ingenious jesting with art." Scarlatti's sonatas are perhaps most famous for their flamboyant Hispanic touches, with hints of the rhythms and melodies of Spanish folk music. (The composer, born in Naples, spent 25 years in Madrid.) During his lifetime his music was not widely circulated and it's impact and influence was largely restricted to composers like Sebastián de Albero and Antonio Soler who, like Scarlatti himself, had connections with the royal household of Spain.

This is a delightfull performance of some of Vivaldi's best known concertos, but don't be put off if you already have most of them, baroque music is all about interpretation, much pleasure can be had from listening to different ones.