We don't know a lot about either the origin or the date of composition of Mozart's Serenade No. 10 for winds in B-flat major, K. 361/370a, or about its apocryphal title "Gran Partita", given to it retrospectively. But regardless of the facts, we are in the presence here of a Mozartian miracle. Probably meant for performances in the open air, in the courtyard of a stately home or a lodge, this serenade for thirteen wind instruments and double bass is one of Mozart's most outstanding works in terms of its diversity, its length and its expressive density, culminating in the sublime Adagio. The film Amadeus by Miloš Forman, showed the inexplicable nature of genius, when Antonio Salieri, otherwise an excellent composer, was paralysed by this otherworldly music.
Recorded in June 1988 at Nijmegen in eastern Holland, where a series of treaties were signed in the 17th century, putting an end to a long period of wars, this version by Frans Brüggen and his Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century offers an illuminating balance between organological research and performances of Viennese classicism. The unbridled joy mingles, naturally, with a melancholy which is also very much a part of the Enlightenment and Mozart in particular, especially in the most beautiful passages of his operas. © François Hudry/Qobuz