Mozart: Gran Partita

Album review

Mozart's Serenade in B flat, K. 361, dubbed the Gran Partita, is grand in every sense, a glorious expansion of the pre-Classical wind serenade to an ensemble of 13 instruments and a framework of seven spacious movements. Each movement begins with simple material that allows room, as Mozart develops it, for the introduction of lovely echo devices and the like -- the trademarks of the hunt-evoking Feldparthie and of the more party-oriented serenade. It is not known for whom Mozart composed this massive and thoroughly unmarketable work, but it was likely emperor Joseph II. One can almost hear him muttering that there are too many notes. The Gran Partita benefits from a tempo that keeps it moving along; with its functional-music antecedents it calls for less of an expressive presence from the performers than other Mozart works. (The same is true of the equally radical Serenade in C minor, K. 388, which doesn't need desperately whining oboes to make its intense and dark impact.) The Nederlands Blazers Ensemble or Netherlands Wind Ensemble favors rapid tempos indeed; the booklet advertises a 50-minute work, but the performance clocks in at just over 45. Sample the last movement to see if you're nonplussed by the speed, but give the music a chance -- the group's ensemble work is superb, and Mozart's subtle details of texture, made possible thanks to the inclusion of two basset horns and a double bass in the large ensemble, aren't shortchanged. This live performance was greeted with enthusiastic applause and even a whoop or two at the end, and the applause died away only very slowly -- just the thing to let the SACD engineers show their stuff, and the disc in general is a nonpareil example of live recording that any engineer might hear profitably. One might wish for a bit more than 45 minutes of music, and the inclusion of a shorter divertimento or serenade would have clarified what Mozart was up to. The performance is very strong, however, on its own terms.

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