Description
Pianist Evren Ozel has gained notice among the crop of young players, not least by gaining a home-team bronze medal at the 2025 Van Cliburn Competition in Texas, and violinist Jan Mrá¿ek has likewise drawn praises in Europe. One might profitably sample them on this 2025 release on the Alpha label; both would seem to be on the way to wider recording exposure. This release made classical best-seller lists in the summer of 2025. There is nothing strikingly original about it, but one should remember that a really concise, coherent performance of Mozart in the classic vein, with lyricism, grace, and wit, is not and never has been an easy thing to pull off. The ORF Radio-Symphonie Wien under the veteran conductor Howard Griffiths is crisp, with precise but not cold attacks, perhaps influenced by the historical performance movement, although the players use modern instruments. Ozel shows not just promise but mastery as a Mozart pianist, with plenty of depth in the slow movements of the Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major, K. 271, and Piano Concerto No. 12 in A major, K. 414. In the outer movements of these concertos, he has an uncanny sense of the large musical spaces opening up in Mozart’s mind as he wrote these works. Mrá¿ek gives a fine specimen of the bright, sweet French style that marked Mozart’s violin concertos even before he departed for Paris. It is an unusually persuasive performance of the Violin Concerto No. 2 in D major, K. 211. This recording appeared as part of Alpha’s “Next Generation Mozart Soloists” series, and it appears to have identified two very promising members of that class. ~ James Manheim
