Romberg, Mozart & Haydn: Orchestral Works

Album review

Mozart and Hayden, who make up the second half of this album, are not exactly unknowns, but as for Andreas Romberg... This contemporary of Mozart (although he outlived Wolfgang Amadeus by three decades) wrote dozens of symphonies, of which we have just one here, the feisty Fourth "Alla Turca" of 1798. The oriental reference indicates that the orchestra contains several percussion instruments that were then associated with the music of the janissaries, not forgetting a few rather martial rhythms and some harmonic turns which are oddly supposed to evoke Turkey – who had been at the gates of Vienna not long before, and even in the late 18th century, the threat was far from over. Between the later Mozart and the early Beethoven, Romberg produced a body of work that was delicious, spontaneous, wildly exotic and diabolically well-orchestrated. As for Mozart's Fifth Concerto for Violin, it is presented here with a dash of Turkish style itself – given that the final movement contains a famous passage of turquerie, on strings alone, but with the percussive spirit that one might imagine. Finally, the overture from L’incontro improvviso by Hayden introduces an opera set in Basra: now in Iraq but then a part of the Ottoman Empire. Here, too, janissary percussion and rhythms ornament the discourse of a classico-oriental album. All overseen by the excellent Collegium Musicum Basel. © SM/Qobuz