Major Thomas

By ''Early Viennese School'' is meant the group of composers contemporary, in the capital city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with Haydn and Mozart. Not all of it is particularly early; indeed Albrechtsberger, Vanhal and Salieri lived well into the nineteenth century. And it is arguable whether the Viennese of this period really represent a 'school' in the sense that the Mannheimers, or even the North Germans, clearly do; Vienna was a great musical clearing-house, wide open to influences (French and especially Italian opera were much performed there all through this period), and it is perhaps better to regard Viennese composition of the time as representing a wide spectrum of dialect within the late eighteenth-century lingua franca.

Violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte and lutist Thomas Dunford illuminate aspects of the elusive amalgamation that is the 17th-century English notion of melancholy. The inconsolable 'Mad Lover' of the album title is reimagined as a character from the reign of Charles II. This tale is told through music from the pen of such violin virtuosos as the prodigiously gifted Nicola Matteis. Heightened by the exuberance and abandon common to those musicians transplanted from Italy, the beguiling nuances of this language of yearning and loss continue to echo in the popular music of our time.

There's a tendency on the part of some performers to play Beethoven's First and Second Piano Concertos as if they were really by Mozart–all elegance, poise, and refinement. Happily, Boris Berezovsky finds the Beethovenian fire burning beneath the Mozartian surface. Right from his vibrant entrance in Concerto No. 1, Berezovsky plays with fierce energy (despite his generally light touch) and a clearly discernible enjoyment. This is matched Thomas Dausgaard's equally electric reading of the orchestral part, which in many ways reminds me of the classic Szell/Fleisher recording. Of course the small-scale sound of the 38-member Swedish Chamber Orchestra cannot possibly equal the full sonority of the Cleveland Orchestra in its heyday, but it's remarkable how Szell's clear textures and crisp articulation match Dausgaard's, who, by the way, is using the new Barenreiter editions. Berezovsky seems to be of like mind with Fleisher, at least terms of his singing tone and mercurial style.