Mozart Violin Cadenzas

Over the wonderfully enjoyably years of conducting, there have been so many fine encounters with the Mozart Violin Concertos – mostly with very gifted players like Menuhin, Oistrakh, Stern and, more recently, Cho-Liang (Jimmy) Lin. There have, however, been instances (only a few, I’m pleased to say) when I’ve come, in the performances, to dread the onslaught of those cadenzas, which sound like a send up of Paganini, or belong to the wrong century with a plethora of double-stopping lasting too long, venturing into tonalities Mozart would not have recognized. After several performances with Jimmy came a request from him for suitable cadenzas that showed off the solo violin while commenting on Mozart’s music he had just played. They worked, and Sony asked us to record them all and, with the welcome inclusion of Jaime Laredo, all the rest of Mozart’s violin and orchestra repertoire. This led to in an invitation from Schott to have the cadenzas published, and this is the result.