Mozart? by
The Festival Winds is an attractively packaged two-disc set in CBC's Musica Viva series devoted to six wind serenades tentatively identified as being by
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart but at the time of issue (early 2006) impossible to confirm as his work. Also included is an early
Beethoven work for winds, the Rondino in E flat, WoO 25, of 1792. This is straight-up "Harmoniemusik" of a kind common in the late eighteenth century, wind instruments in pairs, no flutes, and no outdoor or military application. The music, written as light entertainment for the nobility and designed to fall into the background, does not betray the mark of a particular musical personality. Some of these scores originated with
Mozart's favored music copyist Johann Traeg and advertised through Traeg's firm within mere weeks of the composer's death. Non-Mozartian, Harmoniemusik-styled arrangements of other
Mozart works, particularly in terms of operatic paraphrases, are so common from the years around 1800 that this further clouds the possible authenticity of these more modest- and anonymous-sounding conceptions.
Although the notes by editor Daniel N. Leeson may give one the first impression that these are premiere recordings, in all but the instance of a single Rondo movement added to the Divertimento in E flat, K. Anh. C 17.04, all of this music has been recorded in one form or another elsewhere. They are, nonetheless, the first recordings made from Leeson's specially prepared Northdale Music Press editions of these works that offer a studied and musicologically informed reading of these pieces, for which a consistent publication has been lacking since Breitkopf & Härtel first brought several of them out in 1801.
The Festival Winds is a group that plays the Festival of the Sound, held every summer at Parry Sound in Ontario. It is a fine group, plays this music well, and CBC's recording, likewise, is just what it ought to be. The music, though, remains true to its utilitarian origins and, while it is certainly pleasant sounding, lacks personality and sounds mostly the same from piece to piece.
The Festival Winds' Mozart? is mainly recommended to fanciers of period wind music and folks who must have every note that
Mozart is thought to have written.