This segment of the Academy's monumental survey of Mozart's symphonies (and he wrote more than the numbered 41) spans the years 1772-3 or, more precisely, a period of 18 months surrounding Mozart's seventeenth birthday and during which he spent four months in Italy; nor were these 11 symphonies all that he wrote while he was in Salzburg. Father Leopold's attitude to them seems to have been somewhat devious: he wrote to his son, some years later, that he had not sought to publish them in case W. A. might wish to forget them when he was older and wiser, but he had already offered them to Breitkopf—though they were not published in W. A.'s lifetime. Amongst such a productive torrent it would not be surprising to find a certain amount of 'wallpaper music' but there is none, though a few of the gentler movements are rather blandly treated. Five of these works are Germanic concert symphonies, much shorter, lacking minuets and with few repeated sections. Of these latter, two (not included in 'the 41') are overtures, one (K135) to the opera Lucio Silla, which was completed and premiered during Mozart's stay in Milan, the other (K141a) to the serenata Il sogno di Scipio, though of course all Mozart's early symphonies were written as introductions or codas to various kinds of entertainment.
Mozart produced these symphonies with astonishing speed but his imagination never slipped into neutral: Leopold need not have worried—if he really did. Symphony K134, for example, has wind and pizzicato strings conversing over a viola drone in the Trio, and a finale in the form of a sonata-developed bourree. The performances are full of energy and fine detail, and the impressively handled period instruments yield a transparency of sound, which, as SS commented, lets in light and reveals the separate lines as present-day instruments do not; one virtually hears the works anew. The CDs have as good a sound as one might wish for; clear and bright, with an appropriate sense of space, and the insert booklet is of the same high standard as its companions in this series. Some minor objections (validly raised by SS) notwithstanding, this is a truly 'archival' issue.'