Mozart / Bianchini / Lambour - Mozart By Arrangement 3 (CD)

Until the advent of recordings, the way you got to know the music of the masters was to play them yourself. The expansion of domestic music-making at the beginning of the nineteenth century generated a huge market for arrangements, most of them for piano solo or duet. Mozart was a special favorite, and this programme extends the basic premise by arranging some of those pieces for organ as well as presenting some contemporary arrangements and completions, recorded on an organ of Mozart's own day. Zeno Bianchini was born in Verona and grew up in a family of scientists. His great-grandfather's brother was the respected doctor Severino Bianchini, whose patients included Giacomo Puccini and the poet Giovanni Pascoli. Zeno played the organ in Verona Cathedral from an early age. Studies in Baroque organ, harpsichord, historic performing practice, musicology, composition, church music and conducting followed in Verona, Pistoia, Padua, Trossingen and Freiburg i'm Breisgau. He also trained as an organ expert. He worked in Donaueschingen from 2003 to 2009, and then moved to Stockach on Lake Constance, where he is cantor and organist at the Church of St Oswald. The Swiss musician and musicologist Christian Lambour was born into a Breton Huguenot family in The Hague, where he began his studies in historic keyboard instruments, which he continued in Vienna. His recitals have featured premieres of works by Fanny Hensel, Eusebius Mandyczewski, Frank Martin and Sir Hubert Parry. His compositions include the cantata Jerusalem, Triptychon for Edith Stein for flute and organ, Le Tombeau de Jehan Alain for organ, works for piano, a fantasy on the Dutch national anthem 'Wilhelmus' for harpsichord and a recent setting of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Von guten Mächten. His album AlmostMozart was released by Koch Schwann in 1991 for the Mozart bicentenary celebrations. He lives in Vienna and on Lake Constance.