This is Vol. 1 of a projected series of Mozart serenades and divertimentos with this chamber group drawn from the Mozart Academy in Salzburg, of which Sandor Vegh has been Music Director since 1978. They are bright, robust performances recorded closely and vividly in what sounds like a small but comfortable hall. The string tone is bright and rather edgy, and together with the closeness that brings some of the incidental qualities we expect of 'authentic' performance, one of the instances of the new-movement influencing traditional performance.
The contrast in the major work here, the splendid Divertimento, K334, with the rival version on CD could hardly be sharper. That is from the Academy of St Martin's Chamber Ensemble on Philips and unlike this one uses solo strings, making it in effect a septet, two horns plus strings in four parts with double-bass as usual doubling the cello. The result is elegant and refined, very sweet on the ear and beautifully recorded. Next to it the Salzburg performance with a small body of strings of unspecified size sounds relatively rough in its blending and absence of pianissimo—largely a question of recording balance and of the inevitable problems with a very small body of multiple strings. Rhythmically too the Salzburg performance is less resilient, with the theme-and-variations second movement outstaying its welcome, rather plain and heavy at a slow speed, not at all like an authentic performance. In that movement Vegh rightly observes the repeats in both halves of each of the live variations, but when he fails to observe the exposition repeat in the first movement or either half of the lovely Adagio (the fourth of the six movements) the balance of movements is falsified. The Academy ensemble achieve a much more satisfying balance of timing by observing all the repeats at rather faster tempos.
That means though the Camerata's fill-up may seem the more generous—the third of the three-movement ''Salzburg'' Symphonies, among the best-known of the divertimentos—in effect the playing-time is identical. The other two ''Salzburg'' Symphonies are included on the second disc of the Capriccio series, along with Eine kleine Nachtmusik and the Serenata notturna (CD 10 185—to be reviewed later). With fresh, bright manners and recording to match, the series could well blossom when the performers, helped by the recording team, blend more sweetly.'