il Mio Lato b

La Clemenza di Tito can be rather bloodless, but in this instance an elegant, vocally impeccable cast makes up for much of the lack of drama in John Pritchard’s conducting. Werner Hollweg’s pingy tenor cuts through the orchestra brilliantly, and he uses his voice very well. Teresa Cahill and Anne Howells are an attractive-sounding pair as the young lovers, and Robert Lloyd is typically strong as Publio. The honors here go to Yvonne Minton’s anguished, beautifully accurate Sesto, capturing an often under-valued mezzo in one of her best roles. Janet Baker is Vitella, bringing fire and passion to her melodramatic utterances and immaculate singing to a very challenging role. The sound is excellent.

Mozart and his family spent 15 months in London when the composer was eight years old. In London he wrote his first symphonies and first vocal works, serving major notice to the world. Those have been recorded before and are included here, but what's novel is the inclusion of music by other composers whom Mozart would have heard in London. Many of the works here receive their premiere recordings, and The Mozartists and conductor Ian Page ably sketch the influences they likely had on Mozart. Some of the influences from J.C. Bach have been recognized before, but Page goes more deeply into them: you can hear Mozart's way of assigning expressive meaning to transitional passagework, uncanny already at age eight, in the music of the "London Bach.