Gramophone's October issue looks at both the end and the (almost) beginning of Mozart’s musical life. In our cover story, Richard Wigmore tells the story of 1791, the composer’s final year which gave us, among other works, the sublime Clarinet Concerto and the core of his profound Requiem. He also sat in on sessions for the 11-year-old’s sacred work Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots. It’s easy to settle down for a performance of any of Mozart’s works and forget the context, forget his age. Younger at his death than, I daresay, most of you reading this, Mozart’s brief but intense compositional life left us the gift of astonishing works which take humanity and explore, enhance and enrich it. Gifts to listeners, but gifts in the first instance to performers. In both articles, we’ve told the stories through interpreters and interpretations. For however amazing a score, it’s the reinterpretation, the endless possibilities for exploration and discovery, the opportunity to bring to audiences anew the profound power that lies in the notes, that make these works live as music for today and so define what we stand for here at Gramophone.

Elsewhere in this issue I talk to one of today’s most eloquent 
and fascinating of interpreters, the cellist Steven Isserlis, about a phenomenally busy period of recording and performing. We also sent a photographer off to a recording in Prague with the Gramophone Award-winning Pavel Haas Quartet, his brief to capture the essence of a session for us: four people – albeit astonishingly talented ones – taking Schubert’s intense music and making it speak afresh. Both are among those artists singled out for Gramophone Choice recordings this month, a list led by a new set of Brahms symphonies from Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, on superb form. The catalogue does not want for sets of symphonies by Brahms, so each new interpretation must justify its place by making familiar music feel newly powerful. That we’ve given Chailly’s set this accolade says that we very much feel it does: 
we hope you enjoy it.