It’s an experiment I have not tried, but I fancy that if one were to play this Furtwängler Salzburg performance one night and follow with the Arnold Östman, its antithesis in point of style (speeds, textures and so forth) the next, it might be a case of reconciling opposites: one could find each as convincing as the other, and be moved by each, but in a different way. Certainly the argument against Furtwängler is easily made. Basically: would Mozart have called the opera a ‘dramma giocoso’ if he had in mind a performance of this sort? But the argument in favour of it is that (you could substantiate this quantitatively, I think) a prohibitively large number of bars in the score are not written in the Mozartian language of comedy. Furtwängler almost convinces me that ‘dramma giocoso’ is itself a joke.

This 1953 version is probably the most satisfying we have of Furtwängler’s Giovannis in the Salzburg series. 1950 brought together a more exciting cast (Gobbi in the title-role, Welitsch as Anna, Seefried as Zerlina and Kunz as Leporello) but is not so well recorded; 1954 has the same cast as ’53, with the exception of Deszö Ernster who sings a disastrously wobbly Commendatore, but it doesn’t lift as this does. The ‘constants’ in all three casts are Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Anton Dermota, both of them unequivocal assets and consistent in their excellence over all three years. Cesare Siepi was a Giovanni to see as well as hear: his opulent, sonorous tone is welcome, less so its bass-weighted character and his graceless way with the Serenade. Otto Edelmann’s Leporello flashes vividly into existence as a character every so often and is always well sung. Walter Berry is festival-casting as Masetto, and Raffaële Arié, if not ideally empyrean, is more steady than Greindl (1950) who is firmness itself compared with Ernster (1954).

Of the women, Schwarzkopf has been mentioned. Elvira was always one of her great roles and here she is on top form, with ‘Mi tradì’ clearly the solo most impressive of all to the audience. For the listener now, Elisabeth Grümmer’s ‘Non mi dir’ is a comparable high spot, the slow speed probably working for her in the second half but posing a fearsome challenge in the first. This, however, is much her best singing; elsewhere she is often tremulous and even shrill (in 1954 Harold Rosenthal noted in Opera: ‘Grümmer should not really sing Donna Anna: she has neither the weight of voice nor personality for the role’). Of Erna Berger’s 52-year-old Zerlina a listener might well suppose her a talented ingénue, and ‘Vedrai, carino’ goes particularly well at Furtwängler’s comfortable andante.

And in the end it all comes back to Furtwängler. Certainly this is Mozart viewed with fore-knowledge of Beethoven, whereas the modern approach prefers to look as from the 18th-century inheritance. I think those who love the opera more than a particular conception of it will love this performance.