With a nod to René Jacobs’s 2009 recording (Harmonia Mundi, A/10), Martin Wåhlberg conceives Mozart’s ‘comedy with machines’ as a radio play with music. In the process we get every word of Schikaneder’s dialogue, plus a colourful array of sound effects involving, inter alia, a guitar and a historical trombone. The fortepiano is rarely backward in adding commentaries, mini-cadenzas and countermelodies, à la Jacobs. Thematic snatches and distant bell chimes punctuate Sarastro’s opening monologue. Drawing on contemporary sources, Wåhlberg includes fragments of a flute ‘fantasia’ during the Act 2 trial of silence, perhaps based on improvisations by the original Tamino, Benedikt Schack.

With lively, natural-sounding delivery from the mainly non-German cast (no sententiousness in the Masonic scenes), the reams of dialogue come off well, even if the Three Ladies don’t match the wit and brio of their counterparts on the Jacobs recording. Musically, this Flute is more of a mixed bag. Wåhlberg’s avowed aim in his booklet note is to create a performance as close as possible to what was heard in the Theater auf der Wieden in 1791. We don’t know the exact size of Mozart’s orchestra, though I’d bet that he would ideally have liked more than Orkester Nord’s 12 strings. From the Overture onwards you certainly hear unfamiliar colours and balances, ‘woody’ period wind to the fore. I like the hieratic gravity of the trombones in the Priests’ March and Sarastro’s ‘O Isis und Osiris’. But to my 21st-century ears the six violins simply sound thin. They never sing or shine.

Like Jacobs before him, Wåhlberg can play fast and loose with tempo; with Mozart’s scoring, too, as with the explosive added drums when Tamino is pursued by the serpent. Hesitations and sudden spurts abound, whether in the opening number for Tamino and the Ladies, the two Quintets, or the abrupt jolt forwards as Tamino answers the Armed Men. For all his theatrical energy, Wåhlberg is unconcerned with maintaining a stable pulse or transitioning smoothly between sections.

In a variable cast, the best singing comes from Manuel Walser’s Papageno, firm and dark of tone, more sad clown than perky Viennese Hanswurst. Like all the principals, he’s encouraged to ornament freely, though the florid embellishments in ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen’ seem at odds with the song’s demotic style. Pauline Texier’s Queen has all the high notes but sometimes sings flat; and her words are barely comprehensible. Moving to the basement, Bastian Kohl’s Sarastro is sonorous but graceless. Legato is evidently not in his armoury. ‘O Isis und Osiris’ is more a determined statement than a prayer, while ‘In diesen heil’gen Hallen’, complete with dubious fortepiano decorations, emerges as a perfunctory route march. As Tamino, Angelo Pollak has a pleasant light tenor, not always evenly produced or perfectly tuned. He, too, is legato-shy. After the drawn-out opening phrases of the portrait aria he slows up at the slightest provocation, and ends up sounding mooning rather than ardent.

Anna Gottlieb, Mozart’s original Pamina, was just 17 (five years earlier she had sung Barbarina in Figaro). Wåhlberg follows suit by casting the 17-year-old American soprano Ruth Williams in the role. Some will respond more positively than I do to her white, choirboy tones – similar to the (excellent) Three Boys – and find her naivety touching. But it’s a fine line between naivety and monotony. As I hear it, Williams sings her G minor lament with bland imperturbability, as if she barely understands Pamina’s plight. Maybe that’s how Anna Gottlieb sounded in 1791. But it’s not what I want from a Pamina in 2025.