Mackerras’s series of opera recordings, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, has a character very much its own, deriving from his natural feeling for the dramatic pacing of Mozart’s music and the expressive and allusive nature of its textures, as well as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s sensitivity and responsiveness to him. These are not period-instrument performances (except in that natural horns and trumpets are used, to good effect), but Mackerras’s manner of articulation, and the lightness of the phrasing he draws from his strings, makes it, to my mind, a lot closer to a true period style than some of the performances that make a feature of period instruments and then use them to modern ends (I am thinking less here of British conductors than some from Europe).
This, then, is another of those opera recordings where, seated in your own drawing-room, you are made to feel as you listen to the overture that the curtain is about to rise: it’s a bright, bubbling performance, with the piccolo more sharply audible than it often is. Mackerras’s cast, as commonly in this series, includes several younger singers. The freshness often compensates for lack of experience. Paul Groves, the Belmonte, has done little recording; he has an even, well-formed voice, quite tightly focused, firm and masculine, with a good touch of heroic timbre. There is not yet much of the lyrical warmth that these Mozart tenor roles ask for, though; I would have welcomed a softer, more gentle touch in ‘O wie angstlich’, and again in ‘Wenn der Freude Tranen fliessen’, which needs caressing. But he does sing these very capably (including the lengthy full version of the latter, in an appendix to the recording), while in the last-act aria there is some pleasant softer singing.
I have not previously come across the soprano, Yelda Kodalli, Turkish-born, who (ironically) is cast as Konstanze. It is a very brilliant, bell-like voice, with a strong and clean top register; at first, after ‘Ach, ich liebte’, I thought it rather unvaried in tone and expression, but there is real expressive intensity to ‘Traurigkeit’ and a splendidly bold, forthright ‘Martern aller Arten’, with powerful coloratura in what amounts to an impressively shaped account (from Mackerras and his players, too) of that magnificent piece. The Blonde, Desiree Rancatore, seems to me the most naturally stylish member of the cast, very spirited, with a real sense of how to turn a phrase. I am not sure that there is quite the ideal tonal contrast either between the two sopranos or the two tenors. Pedrillo, Lynton Atkinson, does his big central aria with directness and wit, but I should have preferred some softer tone and more delicate shading in the Romance. Peter Rose doesn’t give us the usual caricatured Osmin, and there isn’t quite the fat in the voice that is traditional to the role, but it is a good, direct, strongly sung performance with proper attention to a firm line, there’s a good bottom D, and there is no shortage of wit or spirit in ‘Ha! wie will ich triumphieren’. Oliver Tobias provides a rather soft-spoken Pasha.
The ensembles seem to go particularly well, due no doubt to Mackerras’s control and pacing; I am thinking especially of the act finales (the quartet is particularly fine), but the profound emotional force of the duet-recitative, when Belmonte and Konstanze are facing death, is also very finely realized. Dialogue is included, considerably shortened but sufficient to make clear sense; I should have preferred slightly more, if only because the sheer richness of the music demands space between numbers.
This version is, I think, a strong contender for recommendation as the leading modern- instrument version, in preference to the classic Bohm; it is a matter of measuring Mackerras’s superior dramatic vitality against Bohm’s outstanding pair of leading soloists, Auger and Schreier. For period-instrument performances, Christie is now the first choice, but admirers of Hogwood may well be content with his pleasing version.'