Mozart Trio

When Richard Maunder's editions get together with Christopher Hogwood and co, you know instantly that the result will be spot on. The sound of the boy treble line (singing alto as well) is earthy yet in tune, and well complemented by the strong lower parts. The orchestra is supportive yet unobtrusive. The dynamics and phrasing are all well chosen and executed. The choice of soloists is inspired, especially Arleen Auger - such a beautiful voice. It is just a pity that there is not more on the disc - some have argued in the 'Dona ut Kyrie' tradition that an Agnus Dei could be tacked on at the end using the music of the Kyrie. An excellent recording.

Mackerras’s series of opera recordings, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, has a character very much its own, deriving from his natural feeling for the dramatic pacing of Mozart’s music and the expressive and allusive nature of its textures, as well as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s sensitivity and responsiveness to him. These are not period-instrument performances (except in that natural horns and trumpets are used, to good effect), but Mackerras’s manner of articulation, and the lightness of the phrasing he draws from his strings, makes it, to my mind, a lot closer to a true period style than some of the performances that make a feature of period instruments and then use them to modern ends (I am thinking less here of British conductors than some from Europe).

Ensemble Zefiro, a period instrument group, give careful, attentive readings of Mozart’s two big octet serenades. In each case the opening movement is rather deliberate but very exactly judged in terms of dynamics and accentuation, and collectively very efficiently and precisely executed. The remaining movements are taken quite quickly, especially the minuets (the second of K375 seems unduly so and the trio is done much more slowly; while the canonic one in K388 is a little lightweight).

This recording is the second part of an eventual triptych that will contain the six string quartets dedicated to Haydn: no.14 in G major, K387, the first of them, was composed in 1782, when Mozart had just arrived on the Viennese musical scene; no.15 in D minor K421, the second, is the only one in the minor mode and was completed in 1783 while his wife Constanze was in labour – she related that the rising intervals of the second movement recalled her cries from the room next door as he composed.

These performances of the three most popular examples of Mozart's youthful sacred music represent a golden age of The English Concert - a period-instrument ensemble founded by harpsichordist and conductor Trevor Pinnock in 1973. They excelled in blowing away the cobwebs from fascinating repertoire from Purcell to Haydn during their fruitful years of collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv label. This album also features a choir that is a veritable Who's Who of the booming British early music choral scene in the early 1990s.

In the mid-18th century a composition bearing the name Sinfonia concertante captivated audiences at large public concerts in Paris, London and Mannheim. In many ways akin to a solo concerto, symphonies with the participation of a group of solo instruments were seen primarily as an alternative to the usual orchestral symphony – somewhat lighter in content, but far more virtuoso and showy by nature…

Mozart was the only composer to successfully conquer this hybrid form. For him, an orchestral serenade meant a large work (often nearly an hour long) combining all of the parts of a symphony with several aspects of the concerto. There are marches, minuets, and sections featuring a solo violin or horn. Karl Bohm was a Mozart specialist–his interpretations have just the right combination of discipline and spontaneity. This is music from an era when the pace of life was much more leisurely than it is now. So sit back, relax, and enjoy.