Serenades, Dances, Marches is the second volume in Philips' Complete Mozart Edition, available as part of a large box containing the whole of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's output and as a single item, as here. Though its 13 discs are the same as in the 1990 edition, its 2000 repackaging has a cleaner, more attractive design. Mozart's serenades, dances, and marches -- his "pop" music -- contains a decent amount of his most elegant music along with a healthy dose of material where it seems he is merely going through the motions. The ratio of quality versus quantity is roughly 2 to 3 in the Serenades and even lower in the other music.
Mozart's orchestral serenades are heard here in recordings made in the 1980s by
Neville Marriner and the
Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, whereas his orchestral dance music and marches are represented in recordings of 1960s vintage performed by
Willi Boskovsky and the Wiener Mozart Ensemble.
Marriner's recordings of this kind set a new standard for performances of Mozart as he utilizes a configuration of the
Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields that reflects the relative dimensions of the bands Mozart himself led. While plenty of ensembles up to that time had done so for J.S. Bach and some of Mozart's contemporaries, Mozart was then relatively new ground for period-minded groups to break. Not all of these recordings remain fresh as a daisy; early digital technology was not particularly kind to string groups, and in some cases
Marriner is less than inspired. But the
Academy is wonderful in pieces like the seldom-recorded Galimathias musicum, a Mozartian buffet dished up in the composer's 10th year demonstrating that certain aspects of his signature style were already in place at such a tender age.
Marriner is rightly regarded as a master interpreter of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which he has recorded several times over the years -- his version is clean, energetic, and stylish. The analog recordings of
Boskovsky in the little dances and marches that so readily populate Mozart's work list present the music with a modern, though small, orchestra, doing this music no harm whatsoever. What it benefits from is
Boskovsky's expert grasp of Viennese style, its sense of lift and pacing.
Obtaining Serenades, Dances, Marches will add all of Mozart's efforts in these genres to one's library, but should not preclude the additional acquisition of single-disc issues that hit the high points of this literature in performances perhaps more outstanding than these. For many to most, the latter option would be the better way to go, but for libraries and private collections where Mozart's whole output in these areas is required, Serenades, Dances, Marches more than adequately meets the need.