Mozart 225
The New Complete Edition
Various soloists, ensembles, conductors and orchestras
Decca & DG (200CD)

Record collectors and Mozart lovers were onto a good thing back in 1991 when Philips Classics commemorated the bicentenary of the death of Wolfgang Amadeus (on December 5, 1791) with the ambitious, 180-disc Complete Mozart Edition. Now Universal music, who inherited the defunct Philips catalogue, have topped even that with Mozart225, a lavishly annotated, immaculately curated 200-disc box set so impressive it’s worth acquiring even if you still own the earlier collection.

Where the original Complete Mozart focussed on the imposing Philips stable of artists – Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and Marriner for the symphonies, Brendel in the piano concertos, Uchida for sonatas, Colin Davis in the later operas – the new set is free to range the combined catalogues of Decca and Deutsche Grammophon as well, taking a more varied and stimulating look at the way we approach Mozart today.

One lucky subscriber to Limelight Magazine will win a copy of Mozart 225: The New Complete Edition. Click here to find out more.

Perhaps the most striking...