As ever, Harnoncourt makes the listener think anew about the work in hand. All his Mozart recordings have been invigorating and controversial; this one is no exception. It is the second of the six, spread over a number of years, to be made with the Royal Concertgebouw in their own hall. At first glance that might seem an odd choice as Harnoncourt has been so long associated with period-performance methods, but as in the case of Don Giovanni he persuades his players to adopt much period practice, most notably here a string tone almost devoid of vibrato and very prominent and woody-sounding wind. As usual with this conductor accents are very sharp, often surprisingly so. Verbal clarity and lively phrasing sometimes take precedence over smooth legato—Despina's second aria is as good and disconcerting an example of this as any. In that respect this version is at the extreme opposite wing from, say, Karajan's famous EMI account of the 1950s. As Harnoncourt comments in a long and illuminating interview in the accompanying booklet, each generation finds its own way of reading Mozart with which it feels comfortable—and his may in time go out of fashion as others have inevitably done. So his approach is not necessarily the last word on the work; it is his own, very personal interpretation.
That view no doubt governs some of his extremes of tempo: for instance an astonishingly slow one for the quintet ''Di scrivermi'', as if to suggest the weeping of the supposedly parting lovers—but it works unlike that for ''Il core vi dono'', which becomes static at Harnoncourt's stodgy tempo. Similarly the love-song of Gulielmo (sic, that's how Harnoncourt believes Mozart wanted his name spelt), ''Non siate ritrosi'' goes in too leisurely manner. On the other hand, the trio, ''Soave il sento'' is a good deal faster than usual. Nor is Harnoncourt averse to a sudden accelerando as happens in the middle of ''Fra gli amplessi''.
Another very marked difference between this and previous versions is the use of harpsichord and cello to underpin the recitatives, giving a very bare, 'dry' and un-florid effect compared with, say, the fortepiano on the Levine (DG) version. Even more noticeable is the very pointed emphasis on the text. Harnoncourt obviously believes that the music must arise from the words and I think the results here prove him right, except in one or two instances. Finally, I wondered at the choice of a high baritone for Alfonso, a lower one for Gulielmo. Harnoncourt justifies this on two counts: Gulielmo usually has the lowest line in the ensembles and Mozart obviously realized an older man would have a higher rather than a lower line. That said, I don't think it is just traditional ears that make me hear Hampson's as the baritone of a young man (compare Bruscantini for Karajan).
Quite apart from that, Harnoncourt has on the whole got away from conventional casting. At least three of his singers offer highly individual characterizations. Charlotte Margiono, such a vital, fiery Vitellia at Salzburg this summer, is here a bold, mettlesome, smiling (in the decision duet) Fiordiligi, firm to angry in ''Come scoglio'', emotionally distraught in ''Per pieta'', overwhelmed in her eventual submission to Ferrando. At all times she is more concerned with creating a keen portrait rather than in just singing beautifully as do Te Kanawa (Levine) and Mattila (Marriner/Philips), and she is perhaps even more affecting than Lella Cuberli (Barenboim/Erato). She rather reminds me of Vaness (Haitink/EMI) and Souez (Busch/EMI). Then Anna Steiger is very much a Despina for the 1990s, bold almost to the point of brashness, courageously brittle with the text, very much a girl who has seen it all. Her notary is way over the top. Vocally the role sounds about a third too high for her. The ever-improving Gilles Cachemaille is a wonderfully mellow, smiling Gulielmo, one of the best on disc and presenting a rounded portrait, full of keenly thought-out detail. For instance, he uses the extra space given him by Harnoncourt in ''Donne mie, la fate a tanti'' to point up the words, especially the repeated ''a tanti'', in a way that fully justifies the slower tempo—which also allows for the revelation of the pertinent instrumentation.
The other three singers are better-known quantities. Ziegler was Haitink's Dorabella; here she is more positive, having grown in artistic stature (as her glorious Sextus at Salzburg showed), even if vocally she is a shade less flexible than before. Deon van der Walt offers an accomplished Ferrando, conveying the character's anguish when his Dorabella falls prey to Gulielmo's charms. His tone is at times uncomfortable on the ear, too white in colour, but he phrases his three arias (all are included in this absolutely complete version) with skill and technical control, particularly in ''Ah, lo veggio'', which he sings with a delicate ease and lightness any other Mozartian tenor (even the excellent Aler on Haitink's set) might envy. As I have suggested, Hampson sounds definitely too young for Alfonso, but he so gets under the skin of the puppetmaster's role as to convince a doubting mind (by the way, Harnoncourt also has some interesting things to say about the different ways this character can be viewed).
The recording is large in scale, too much so for my taste, with unwanted reverberation around the voices (why do some producers indulge in this unreal practice, others—sensibly—do not?), but in spite of that reservation everything is clear, everything tells (unlike in the similarly recorded Barenboim set) because the acoustics in the Concertgebouw are so good. I retract none of my praise for Marriner's ebullient, strongly cast version, nor for Haitink's intimate reading or yet again for Fritz Busch's still-valid (though cut) 1935 set, now so cleanly remastered, or for Ostman (L'Oiseau-Lyre), who offers the full authentic deal. Bohm's classic EMI version with—for better or worse—a much more sophisticated cast than that heard here remains as a kind of home base. But Harnoncourt deserves to be up there in that kind of company for the sake of his invigorating re-think of well-worn ideas and, above all, for touching on all the emotional nerves of this ever-fascinating score. I was won over by a set that lives dangerously and never accepts ordinary standards without a challenge.'