Mozart's Divertimentos
Gaudier Ensemble's recording of Mozart's Divertimentos
Gramophone Choice
Divertimentos – F, K247; D, K334
Gaudier Ensemble
Hyperion CDA67386 (76' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
How lucky the burghers of Salzburg, in Mozart’s day, who had such music as this to accompany their family celebrations! Mozart wrote a small group of divertimentos for strings and horns for the local aristocracy during his later years there, to augment his salary and prestige, and he did it with a mastery of technique that enabled him to find exactly the right blend of high spirits, warmth of expression and wit.
When they’ve been recorded, it’s nearly always been with an orchestra rather than a solo group. In Austria in Mozart’s time, the word ‘divertimento’ signified solo performance, and there’s a world of difference between what a sensitive solo fiddler and what a galumphing orchestra can do with that top line, in terms of technique, expressiveness and flexibility. And in these performances the bass part is played not by a cello but, as was preferred in Salzburg, a double bass, which provides a different relationship to the upper voices, and the one that Mozart clearly intended.
The Gaudier Ensemble catch the mood of the music perfectly. The elegant sentiment of the slow movements (there are two in each work) is happily conveyed – listen to the sweetness of violinist Marieke Blankestijn’s phrasing in the Adagio of K247 and her gentle, unassuming eloquence in that of K334. In the latter work the second violin is called on, too, for some degree of virtuosity, but it’s to Blankestijn that most of the rapid and stratospheric music goes, and she copes in style. She also phrases the famous first minuet here gracefully. Mozart’s second minuets (each divertimento has six movements) are usually more rumbustious, with the horns prominent, and these too are heartily done. Altogether this is a delectable record.
Additional Recommendation
Mozart Divertimento in D, K334 Schubert Quintet for Piano and Strings in A, ‘Trout’, D667
Members of the Vienna Octet
Pearl mono GEM0129 (72' · ADD · Recorded 1950)
Mozart’s Divertimento for two horns and strings, K334, is one of his ripest and most engaging pièces d’occasion and this is a marvellous performance of it. Indeed, some skimping of repeats and a couple of cuts in the finale notwithstanding, this classic, out of the catalogues for more than 30 years, is still the version to have.
Like the still too little regarded Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet, the Vienna Octet was one of the glories of post-war Viennese musical life. Willi Boskovsky, one of its founders, was a particular inspiration. Boskovsky may not have been every recording producer’s dream. A wonderfully inspirational player, he would not necessarily play a take the same way twice. The results, though, are a joy; his playing, and the playing of the ensemble as a whole, is always burnished, idiomatic, intensely alive. The same could be said of this famous 1950 recording of Schubert’s Trout Quintet, though the Vienna Octet’s remake, recorded with Clifford Curzon in 1957 when Boskovsky was still leading, is one of those gramophone classics difficult to knock off its perch. The original Decca LPs of the present performances (Pearl hasn’t had access to the original tapes) were often said to be wiry in sound and difficult to reproduce, though this isn’t true of the Mozart. Here, it sounds a million dollars. Tracking the latter movements of the Trout LP, though, has clearly not been easy. A barely audible amount of surface noise and a tiny amount of incipient distortion persists. That said, this disc is indispensable.
