Simon P.
 Keefe Michael Nagy giving spirited performances as the feisty
Mozart’s vocal music
Recordings of Mozart’s diverse repertory of vocal music,
from his earliest works through to the Requiem left
incomplete at his death in 1791, have long graced LP, cas-
sette and CD catalogues and cabinets. Judging by most of
the items under review, this happy state of affairs is set to
continue.
Where Mozart’s operas are concerned, early works get
a good airing. Ian Page and Classical Opera give a com-
mendable rendition of W. A.  Mozart: Mitridate, re di
Ponto (Signum Classics sigcd400, rec 2013, 224′), a story
of love, loyalty, betrayal and reconciliation among the
eponymous ruler, his sons and their lovers in a Hellenic
Kingdom on the Black Sea. The singers cope well with
demanding roles in a lengthy opera. Miah Persson
(Aspasia) and Sophie Bevan (Sifare) fluently deliver tricky
coloratura; Lawrence Zazzo (Farnace) sings in a rich,
warm voice throughout; and Barry Banks (Mitridate)
gives a suitably strident rendition of no.20 ‘Vado incontro’
when contemplating his destiny. They are accompanied by
a neat and compact orchestra; the velvety, virtuosic horn
obbligato by Gavin Edwards in Sifare’s no.13 ‘Lungi da te’
is a particular highlight. Ian Pace is also to be thanked for
providing an extra CD of original versions of seven arias
and a duet (including two completed by Stanley Sadie)
rejected by singers associated with the premiere in Milan.
W. A. Mozart: La finta giardiniera (Harmonia Mundi
hmc902126.28, issued 2012, 184′), a tale of love’s trials and
tribulations with Sandrina, the ‘feigned gardener’ of the
title, caught between the attentions of her master Podestà
and continued affection for former lover Count Belfiore,
receives splendid treatment at the hands of René Jacobs
and the Freiburger Barockorchester. They recorded not
the original version (Munich, 1774–5), but a later one from
Prague (1796) with significantly enriched orchestration. It
is not known who carried out the revisions: Jacobs sug-
gests one of Mozart’s musical friends in the Czech capi-
tal, perhaps Johann-Baptist Kucharž (CD booklet, p.48),
who was involved in the premiere of Don Giovanni; and
Milada Jonášová, in an essay on contemporaneous Prague
copies of the opera, proposes ‘a genuine connoisseur of
Mozart’s style’ in light of the ‘elegance and sensitivity’ of
the work (p.63).
The singers are all good, Sophie Karthäuser (Sandrina)
and Marie-Claude Chappuis (Ramiro) excelling in the
understatedly poignant ‘Geme la tortorella’ and ‘Dolce
d’amor compagna’ respectively, and Sunhae Im and
360  Early Music  May 2016
servants Serpetta and Nardo. But the orchestra steals the
show, perhaps appropriately given the recording’s promo-
tion of the little-known Prague orchestration: the ensemble
is meticulous throughout; the playing is full of character;
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the warm, rich wind and tight, intense strings are equally
impressive; and the spontaneous flourishes and embellish-
ments in the recitatives are a pleasant diversion. At times
the orchestra overshadows the soloists, including in their
rigorously dramatic renditions of no.26 ‘Va’ pure ad altri
in braccio’ (Ramiro) and no.13 ‘Vorrei punirti’ (Arminda).
Without doubt this is some of the best orchestral playing
I have encountered in Mozart’s early operas, either in live
performance or in a recording.
The title of another recording, W. A. Mozart: Castrato
arias (Oehms Classics oc1814, rec 2013, 50′) covering
music from across the composer’s operatic career, is a lit-
tle misleading for the CD as a whole. The arias from La
finta giardiniera, Lucio Silla, La clemenza di Tito and
Idomeneo, originally written for the castratos Thomas
Consoli, Venanzio Rauzzini, Domenico Bedini and
Vincenzo Dal Prato, fit the bill. But Cherubino’s ‘Voi
che sapete’ from Le nozze di Figaro, a role created by the
Viennese soprano Dorotea Bussani, certainly does not.
And the lengthy overture to Lucio Silla, the third item
on the disk, features no vocalists at all. It is a pity that
Sesto’s aria ‘Parto, parto’ from La clemenza di Tito was
not recorded in addition to ‘Deh, per questo istante solo’
(or instead of ‘Voi che sapete’): at a total of 50 minutes
for the CD, another aria could surely have been included.
Hearing the obbligato basset clarinet interweave with
Valer Sabadus’s voice in ‘Parto, parto’ also would have pro-
moted vocal and instrumental skills different from those
heard elsewhere on the disk. While Karl Böhmer provides
an informative introduction in the CD booklet, transla-
tions of aria texts, curiously, are not given.
The countertenor Sabadus, occasionally too forceful
in his upper register and underpowered on low notes,
nonetheless handles his diverse repertory in an effective
fashion, demonstrating equal strengths in lyrical and
coloratura singing. ‘Deh, per questo’ from Tito is a high-
light—touching and pristine in the Adagio, with delicate
embellishment in the reprise, and bold and strident in
the Allegro. The Großes Orchester Graz under Michael
Hofstetter’s direction ably accompanies throughout and is
impressively virtuosic by itself in the fast passages of the
Lucio Silla overture.
Sacred music is well represented among recent
recordings. The best disk is W. A. Mozart: ‘Coronation’
Mass; Ave verum corpus; Exsultate, Jubilate (Chandos
chan0786, rec 2011, 70′), with the Choir of St John’s
College, Cambridge and the St John’s Sinfonia under
the direction of Andrew Nethsingha. Not the least
praiseworthy feature of this uniformly excellent CD is
the arrangement of its contents: the ‘Coronation’ Mass
comes first, with two church sonatas (k67 and k224)
positioned between the Gloria and Credo and the Credo
and Sanctus as is liturgically appropriate; the shorter
Missa brevis k192 appears in the second half, with the
well-known Exsultate, Jubilate k165 rounding things off;
and the Ave verum corpus k618 sits serenely in the mid-
dle. Listening to Nethsingha’s interpretation of a diverse
selection of Mozart’s sacred music from beginning to end
is a genuine pleasure. The two Masses feature a splendid
blend of instruments and voices characterized by pre-
cise, well-articulated playing and singing. The ‘Et incar-
natus est’ midway through the Credo of the ‘Coronation’
Mass is a highpoint: voices and instruments are with-
drawn and plaintive through the ‘Crucifixus’, contrasting
powerfully with the upbeat, forthright material before
and after. The two church sonatas make for a welcome
break from the Mass and are elegantly and understatedly
played by the solo strings. For some listeners the open-
ing of the Ave verum corpus k618 may seem slow and
ponderous. But this motet turns out to be the jewel in
the crown: just as so often in recordings by the master
of slow tempos, Leonard Bernstein, listeners are quickly
immersed in Nethsingha’s world and enjoy a wonderful
performance.
The highlight of Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium
Japan’s W. A. Mozart: Requiem (BIS 2091, rec 2013, 74′),
the Vesperae solennes de confessore k339, is for some rea-
son listed neither on the front nor the spine of the CD
cover. The performance is clean and spirited: while solo
soprano Carolyn Sampson’s vibrato is a little excessive,
especially in the ‘Confitebor’, her rendition of the famously
beautiful ‘Laudate dominum’ is appealing in all respects.
The recording of the Requiem is mixed. The Introit con-
tains a good combination of crisp playing and genuine
drama, including at the opening and at ‘et lux perpetua’.
And the thundering timpani, in the Introit and elsewhere,
is memorable. But movements such as the ‘Recordare’ and
‘Hostias’ are too perfunctory, being given insufficient time
to breathe.
Above all, conductor and performers are not helped
by the rather quixotic new edition produced for them by
Masato Suzuki. Little justification is offered for carrying
out yet another revision to the work (and the statement
that it is ‘difficult to identify exactly how much of the orig-
inal manuscript is in Mozart’s hand’ (CD booklet, p.10) is
wrong): Suzuki’s idea was to respect Süssmayr’s comple-
tion, while following Joseph Eybler’s ‘superior’ orchestra-
tion of the Sequence where possible, to add a short fugue
at the end of the ‘Lacrymosa’ based on Mozart’s surviving
sketch, and to make ‘slight amendments’ to the Sanctus,
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Benedictus and Agnus Dei, movements for which no
materials in Mozart’s hand are extant (pp.10–11). The result
is a quirky mish-mash of approaches taken by previous
completers (especially Franz Beyer, Robert D. Levin and
H. C. Robbins Landon): some of Süssmayr’s nicest touches
(such as the basset-horn phrase joins to ‘voca me’ in the
‘Confutatis’) are omitted, presumably to reflect Mozart’s
perceived intentions, but others are included when appar-
ently not what Mozart had in mind (such as the sustained
wind that link to the final bar of the ‘Confutatis’). Two
movements in particular capture the capricious editorial
policy. The ‘Tuba mirum’ is presented twice, first with the
obbligato trombone continuing after its opening arpeggio
as in Mozart’s autograph, and then at the end of the disk with
the bassoon taking over from the trombone after the trom-
bone’s initial arpeggio, as in the first edition (Breitkopf &
Härtel, 1800). Compiled from a Leipzig copy for a pre-
publication performance in 1796 made without access to
the autograph, the first edition included the bassoon con-
tinuation only because no sufficiently skilled trombonist
was available to play it at that time and the performance
copy came with a pencil annotation for bassoon. It would
have been interesting—certainly from a historical per-
spective—to hear the movement in this form had Suzuki
resisted the temptation to tamper with the text even in the
act of promoting it. And it is unclear in any case why he
includes two versions of the ‘Tuba mirum’ without decid-
ing definitively in favour of one or the other. The end of
the ‘Lacrymosa’ demonstrates similar indecision: he gives
both Süssmayr’s famous ‘Amen’ plagal cadence—newly set
to the word ‘requiem’—and a short ‘Amen’ fugue, based on
the Mozart sketch.
W. A. Mozart: Requiem (Naïve v5370, rec 2014, 48′)
is blander fare. Competently performed with some nice
touches, including the tight, compact string playing in the
‘Rex tremendae’ and the forceful precision of ‘et lux per-
petua’ in the Introit, it makes the most of the reverberant
acoustic of the Chapelle Royale de Versailles: the ends of
the Kyrie fugue and ‘Dies irae’ (for example) echo memo-
rably into the ether. All in all, though, Laurence Equilbey
and the Insula Orchestra deliver a safe and at times slightly
languid performance (especially in the ‘Tuba mirum’):
more risks would have been welcome in an attempt to
develop the kind of story about the work and its mean-
ing that was always desirable to 19th- and 20th-century
Early Music  May 2016  361
audiences. (On the last point, see S. P. Keefe, Mozart’s
Requiem: reception, work, completion (Cambridge, 2012),
pp.11–43, 82–106.)
W. A.  Mozart: Betulia liberata (Challenge Classics
cc72590, rec 2012, 123′), written in 1771, takes us back to
the early stages of the composer’s career. The solo singers
perform in an unforced, stylish and polished fashion, but
from time to time are rather dry; more timbral differen-
tiation is desired. Ulrike Hofbauer (Cabri; soprano) is the
best of the bunch, delivering a delightfully light and airy
rendition of no.2  ‘Ma qual virtù’. And Marelize Gerber
(Amital; soprano), on the whole less vocally distinctive
than Hofbauer, gives a buoyant performance of no.11, ‘Quel
nocchier’, soaring impressively in the upper register. The
L’Orfeo Barockorchester under Michi Gaigg offers first-
rate support, including in simultaneously warm and crisp
harpsichord playing in the recitatives. On occasion there
362  Early Music  May 2016
is a bit of a mismatch between the taut, dramatic ensem-
ble and a less intensely engaged singer, such as in Margot
Oitzinger’s rendition of ‘Parto inerme’ (Giuditta; alto). But
conductor, orchestra and singers are all to be praised for
their commitment to an oratorio—Mozart’s only one—
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that deserves more attention than it has hitherto received.
Websites
BIS www.bis.se
Challenge Classics www.challenge.nl
Chandos www.chandos.net
Harmonia Mundi www.harmoniamundi.com
Naïve www.naive.fr
Oehms Classics www.oehmsclassics.de
Signum Classics www.signumrecords.com
doi:10.1093/em/caw051
Advance Access publication July 8, 2016
Early Music: August 2016
The next issue of Early Music includes a wide-ranging
selection of articles from across the journal’s historical
and thematic spectrum. Jeremy Montagu catalogues
the many instruments depicted in a magnificently
illuminated manuscript of the Romance of Alexander
from the 14th century, while Deirdre Loughridge
reviews the evidence concerning muted violins in
18th-century music, delving into questions both of
practical usage and of intended sonic effects. Emma
Hornby and Rebecca Maloy lead us through a case-
study of music and text in one of the oldest reperto-
ries of Christian chant, the Old Hispanic rite. Patrizio
Barbieri traces the various versions of the instrument
known as the claviorgan, while David Rowland sheds
light on gut-strung keyboard instruments in the 18th
century. Ronald Broude and Mary Cyr look at the
changes Marais made between the various printings
of his first set of pièces de viole, and Markus Rathey
reconsiders Bach’s Mühlhausen cantatas in the context
of politics and printing in the city.