Gluck's Don Juan of 1761 is as important in the history of ballet as his Orfeo, written a year later, is in the history of opera. A collaboration with the same choreographer as was responsible for the opera, Gasparo Angiolini, it is a ballet en action, in which every gesture was designed for its expressive effect as opposed to its grace or its virtuosity—an obvious parallel here with the intentions behind Orfeo (and indeed its 'reform' predecessors). Musically, it is a fairly spare and purposeful work, closely keyed to the action of the ballet. And that is a problem: for we don't know the details of the ballet scenario, only its outline. On the sleeve of a Decca LP issue of 1968 (nla) Erik Smith, piecing together various scraps of evidence, made a very plausible reconstruction of the plot for which this music might have been intended (and the usual version, as recorded here, may be rather fuller than the Vienna original). That was helpful, though still there is much in the music that is clearly designed to express something very specific of which we are ignorant. The present issue offers only an outline, and that, like the rest of the booklet, in German. Several movements, then, inevitably seem slightly odd, with music portraying or corresponding with some unknown piece of stage action (as for example in Nos. 5 and 25).
Still, most of the music, like the dances familiar in Gluck's operas, is warm and graceful, and classical in its symmetry and serenity. The performance here is efficient and quite colourful but not, I think, always very stylish. The Arcata Ensemble use modern instruments, and they phrase the music much more decisively than would normally have been done on contemporary ones. In my notes I jotted down 'over-phrasing' during the first number after the Overture, and again in many numbers thereafter, especially in the group 13-18. Pairs of quavers, in particular, are strongly marked, in a way that would hardly be possible on period instruments and sounds somewhat self-conscious. The dynamic tapering at some of the cadences, too, seems to me rather affected, notably in the Overture and Nos. 1 and 4. But the playing is spruce and spirited, generally speaking, sometimes a shade dry and cool, and duly taut in rhythm. One or two movements, such as No. 10, seem to me on the slow side. The gavotte is decidedly rural in tone, and the fandango (drawing on the same Spanish source as the one in Figaro) has plenty of lift. The final numbers, a solemn Larghetto which may well represent Don Juan's encounter with his other-worldly avenger—the sustained, ringing notes on the brass suggest as much—and the Dance of the Furies that Gluck was later to use in the Paris Orphee, are done with due force. The orchestra is modest in size, with strings 6.5.4.3.1, but the balance is good and the sound well formed. This is not the last word in performances of Don Juan but perfectly satisfactory for anyone eager to know this often striking score.'