Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica's latest Nonesuch release, a two-disc recording of the complete Mozart violin concertos, is out now. The Times of London gives the album a perfect five stars and chose it as Classical CD of the Week.

Reviewer Geoff Brown says this offering from the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth—the recordings were made live in concert at the Salzburg Festival in 2006—stands far from crowd and the surfeit of such performances that year. He writes of Kremer on this collection: "His musical intelligence is so probing, his touch so light, his tone so bird-like, that I feel I’m hearing these five concertos for the first time."

What's more, that enthusiasm for the music at his fingertips, even over the performance's five-concerto duration, remains throughout the recording: "indeed, the final three concertos, the most idiosyncratic, generate some of his best and boldest playing."

Brown find that Kremer has been able to rediscover in these works the composer's wit that other recordings have ignored. Kremer's "mind is as quicksilver as Mozart’s pen," he writes, "excitedly darting from phrase to phrase in an intoxicating journey of discovery."

In addition to his praise for Kremer, Brown has kind words for the Kremerata Baltica as well, saying they "play their own part in this set’s pleasures, sprinting or sighing in close harmony with their soloist and director."

Of "these uniformly sparkling performances," the reviewer concludes: "Thank you, one and all; now I can listen to Mozart without fear."

Read the complete five-star review at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk.

---

The San Jose Mercury News includes the collection in its list of "exceptional classical CDs" for the summer. "The music on this two-disc set abounds with feelings of balance and well-being, especially as violinist Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica orchestra flow through the final two of Mozart's five concertos," says reviewer Richard Scheinin. "While listening, the world is right."