You couldn't hope for a clearer sign of how things have changed in new music over the last decade or so than the sight of five eminent young, or young-ish, British composers applying their ingenuity to the art of writing divertimentos (two of them even opting for late eighteenth-century period instrument ensembles) as curtain raisers for last year's Glyndebourne Mozart performances (the promised Don Giovanni serenade by Oliver Knussen never materialized). Theodor Adorno—that great totemic figure of the 1960s and 1970s avant-garde—must be rotating in his grave.
In the event I can't say that each one of these five composers convinced me that he was a natural for the medium, and the Mozartian connections struck me as sometimes effective, occasionally arch and in one case strained beyond breaking point. But the results are strongly contrasted, and perhaps the best way for the critic—as for the listener—is not to stretch comparisons, but to take each piece on its own, very different merits. So here goes:
Dove. ''What can a piece of mine do for an audience that has really come to enjoy one of the great operatic masterpieces of all time?'' asks Jonathan Dove. His solution is plausible, and essentially traditional—a suite of seven tiny movements which as serious concert music might just seem too relentlessly pleasant, but which as a Glyndebourne musical appetizer would no doubt blend very agreeably with garden scents, summer evening breezes and pre-performance small-talk. By the way, despite what Dove is quoted as saying in the note, there is a direct quotation from his 'assigned' opera, Figaro: in No. 5, ''The Countess Interrupts a Quarrel'', after the clarinet has hinted at the Count's ''Contessa, perdono!'', there is his spouse's ''Piu docile io sono...'', the second phrase warmly harmonized a la Steve Reich—a little too sweet for my taste I'm afraid.
Osborne. Like Dove, Nigel Osborne uses 'period' Mozart instruments, only here, we are told, there are serious intentions. ''We're all Albanians when we come to Mozart,'' says Osborne: in other words, we come to Mozart's world—like the pseudoAlbanian Ferrando and Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte—''like characters in disguise. We've all flown in aeroplanes, driven fast cars, eaten junk food—things he couldn't even have imagined''.
Well, I suppose so... The problem is that Osborne's attempts to underline his point by the 'subversive' use of Mozartian instruments (horns tuned in semitonally clashing keys, Anton Stadler's clarinets performing Stravinskian arabesques) result in music which I found neither diverting nor in itself particularly thought-provoking. Did any of Osborne's Glyndebourne listeners discover that their subsequent experience of Cosi had been meaningfully subverted? Unfortunately there were no market researchers on hand to find out.
Harvey. Two movements this time: the first a clever little fantasy on Papageno's bird-call figure—easy to follow, but just pungent enough to raise the music out of background blandness; the second knottier, more amorphous and, for me, much less rewarding. The first on its own would have been near-ideal—its Mozart-connection as real and fruitful as Osborne's was fatally abstract.
Oliver. Those who remember the late Stephen Oliver for his music for BBC Radio 4's ''Lord of the Rings'' adaptation, and perhaps also for his contributions to Robert Robinson's ''Stop the Week'', may find this a surprisingly tough little nut. A loud, acerbic beginning, with grunting low bassoons and shrieking high clarinets, leads into a sequence of seven moody and knottily polyphonic character-pieces, apparently inspired by Oliver's experience of writing new recitatives for the Glyndebourne Clemenza di Tito. It obviously gave him plenty to think about. As a divertimento this determinedly uningratiating piece has to be the least successful on the disc, but it sounds like the one most likely to survive the translation to the concert-hall.
Saxton. A vertiginous ten-minute white knuckle ride through the plot of Idomeneo, landing with sparks and clouds of steam in a flurry of Mozartian fanfares at the end. It doesn't bear much repetition, but it's clever, exciting and in its highly idiosyncratic way the perfect palate-stimulator. The performers seem to have enjoyed it as much as I did.
The anonymity of the studio rather than a Glyndebourne ambience—I realize there would have been huge problems with taking the performances live, but I'm not sure Henry Wood Hall was the ideal solution. The sound is clear though, and the balance is good, even if that means that the horns have had to be placed well back.'