Major Mozart

Mozart’s music cannot be overpraised or overrecorded. It can, however, be overmarketed, as noted here in a recent column on Mozart juvenilia.

Today, attention will again be paid the master whose 200 years in the grave will officially be “celebrated” next year, but our subjects are mature, if not necessarily the most familiar, compositions, works that might be overlooked in next year’s inevitable push for bigger, fancier and/or more authentic Mozart.

Since beginning to record Mozart during the early ‘70s for the Telefunken (now Teldec) label, the Alban Berg Quartet of Vienna has gone from fame tosuperstardom of the big bucks sort otherwise reserved for the Juilliard and Guarneri quartets.

Artistically, they have been near that lofty level from the start, with the advantage also of being younger. Over the years theBerg has, if anything, become even more a technical wonder, if not necessarily more soulful interpreters.

Their remakes of the late Mozart quartets for Angel are currently under way and if in early going some of the blitheness of the prior recordings had toughened into routine, this latest addition to the series is one over which only the tin-eared or terminally envious are likely to carp: a coupling of the two late quartets in D, K. 499 and K. 575 (EMI/Angel 49583), music that achieves the ultimate in Mozartean bliss.

The playing is energetic and unsentimental, but not to the exclusion of tenderness and grace. It is difficult to imagine the music more honestly--or masterfully--presented.

There is little to love, however, in the superpolished, jaded note-reading of pianist Philippe Entremont and soloists of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra (of which he also conductor) in behalf of the two marvelous Piano Quartets, K. 478 and K. 493, with, as fill-up, the D-minor Fantasy, K. 397, for solo piano.

The executants seem to regard the quartets as stately, if not downright square. There’s sufficient speed if little rhythmic life or dynamic sensitivity in their over-resonantly recorded performances (Pro-Arte 469).

The Portuguese pianist Maria Joao Pires, who made an impressive local debut a couple of seasons ago playing Mozart with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra--is the sort of Mozartean whom one might think irrelevant to currently accepted views of the composer and his time. She is a Romantic pianist, but not of swooning, distorting kind.

Her rubatos--the rhythmic displacements once considered anachronistic for this repertory--suggest Classical freedom rather than Romantic excess. And if her attitude toward appoggiaturas, the filling in of blanks in the scores and the proper execution of trills fails to show scholarly consistency, there is nonetheless sufficient drive, naturalness and a certain taut, subdued drama in her playing to make it arresting.

In what would seem to be the first in a Mozart cycle for Deutsche Grammophon (427 768), Pires offers three of the best known sonatas: the works in A minor, K. 310, B-flat, K. 333, and C, K. 545, all played with energy and conviction.

The major Mozartean surprise of recent months is what would seem to be a first recording of an anonymous early 19th-Century arrangement for string sextet of the great Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364 (GM 2025), the parts for solo violin and viola distributed among pairs of violins and viola and the cello, supported by the double-bass.

This is neither a parlor trick nor a throwaway diminution of the original. It works, stunningly well. The harmonies and melodies of the original are preserved and the reinstrumentation is in itself a marvel of inventiveness. The arranger understood and respected Mozart, and in the process created a masterpiece to which chamber ensembles in search of striking, offbeat repertory should pay particular attention in 1991.

Praise, gratitude, respect all accrue to the expert performers, the Minneapolis Artists Ensemble, for this Mozart and its coupling, Hummel’s attractive E-flat Piano Quintet, and to GM Recordings which, under the guidance of composer Gunther Schuller, continues to explore fascinating repertory byways.

The original version of K. 364, on the other hand, sounds rather soggy--through no fault of the composer’s--in a re-release of a live performance from the 1953 Prades Festival (Koch Legacy 70004). The soloist are the justly celebrated siblings, violinist Joseph Fuchs and violist Lillian Fuchs, whose fire, if not skill, is dampened by the ponderous conducting of Pablo Casals and scrappy orchestral execution.

The coupling (from the same concerts), however, makes the disc worthwhile: Mozart’s glorious Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563, in which the Fuchses are joined by cellist Paul Tortelier. Forget about the niceties of Classical style (1953 was a bit early for that), but by all means savor the spiritedness and athletic skill--too much of both, perhaps, in the frenzied finale--of a team of virtuosos at peak power.