Latest releases reviewed

MOZART: WIND SERENADES IN B FLAT K361; IN E FLAT K375
Berlin Philharmonic Wind Ensemble
EMI Classics 343 4242
****

PMozart wrote with delectably resourceful invention for wind instruments, and this disc couples two of his greatest works for wind ensemble. The Serenade in B flat for 13 instruments is unique in its scale and duration of nearly 50 minutes, and the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Ensemble takes to it with the greatest of relish. There are, to be sure, some rough edges and imbalances in the al fresco manner of these unconducted performances. But there's also an infectiously joyous rhythmic bounce to the playing of the fast movements, and a sense almost of self-indulgence in the handling of the extraordinary range of colouring which Mozart chose to explore. www.emiclassics.com

MOZART: PIANO SONATAS IN C K330; IN F K332; IN C MINOR K457; IN A K331
Mikhail Pletnev
Deutsche Grammophon 477 5788
***

Mikhail Pletnev's Mozart is capricious and sensual, and this new disc is to be appreciated more for the performer's contribution than for Mozart's. Pletnev chose a light-toned, mellow-sounding Blüthner concert grand for these new recordings and used it to colour the music in a subtle and extensive range of pastels. The moods range from hesitant, dreamy improvisation to light-fingered raciness, and the rubato changes direction with the inevitability (and sometimes the extremity) of a switchback ride. There are not many pianists who would dare play Mozart with this kind of unfettered freedom - and very few who could be expected to keep their listeners wondering as eagerly about the surprises around the next corner. www.dgclassics.com

MOZART - COMPLETE SOLO PIANO RECORDINGS
Carl Seemann
Deutsche Grammophon Original Masters 477 5856 (6 CDs)
***

The "complete" in the title of this set refers not to Mozart's considerable output for keyboard, but to the recordings (the complete sonatas and the more important self-standing works) made for Deutsche Grammophon by the German pianist Carl Seemann (1910-83) in the run-up to the bicentenary celebrations of 1956. Seemann, a figure more revered in his native Germany than abroad, took a position of mild-mannered objectivity to Mozart. He was reacting against the highly personalised approaches of an earlier generation and aligning himself with the postwar musical purism that was reflected in the rise of Urtext editions. The range of dynamics and tonal colouring is narrow, and there is an undeniable air of impersonality about the playing, which is always judiciously turned, and never flippant or merely pretty. Like a curiously bland but carefully-balanced diet, it reveals more of its flavour the more you expose yourself to it. www.dgclassics.com

SCHOENBERG: STRING QUARTET NO 2; SUITE IN G; CHORUSES
Jennifer Welch-Babidge (soprano), Fred Sherry String Quartet, Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble, Simon Joly Singers/Robert Craft
Naxos 8.557521
*****

The major work in this unusual and imaginative addition to Naxos's ongoing Schoenberg series is the ground-breaking Second String Quartet of 1908. Here, the composer added a soprano for the Stefan George settings of the last two movements ("I feel the air of another planet") and cast himself free from the anchoring forces of tonality. The Fred Sherry Quartet and Jennifer Welch-Babidge capture both the music's rootedness and its new departure in a performance of fine-grained tone and effortless-sounding clarity, and the players' tracery of the gossamer counterpoint is often ravishing, The couplings show an unfamiliar Schoenberg in folksong settings from 1928 and 1948, and in the 1934 Suite in G for Strings, a tonal work intended for students that turned out to be demanding for the best of players. Craft's treatment brings it a real sense of substance. www.naxos.com