This four-disc set of Mozart's chamber music is one of a group of issues which EMI are bringing out to mark the bicentenary, and we notice at once that it is at mid-price and well filled, with an average length of 75 minutes per CD. Also the discs are in envelopes within a slim box so that they do not take up too much shelf space. The next thing to say is that the term 'chamber music' has been interpreted liberally, for one does not expect to find the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and four works for piano solo in a collection so entitled: equally, one might look for at least one string quintet and more than one string quartet, or the remarkable String Trio, K563. Otherwise, the music is well enough chosen to show a range of attractive works which, after all, in Mozart's day would have been played in large rooms rather than purpose-built concert halls, while it would be a foolhardy critic who suggested that the English Chamber Orchestra were wrongly named.
We find a variety of playing styles here, and recording styles too, but that is no bad thing. The D major Divertimento makes a good start, with brisk yet not breathless tempos. It is affectionately shaped by Muti in a warm acoustic, and these Berlin Philharmonic strings don't sound too big for the music. The ECO under Jeffrey Tate in the Serenata notturna are equally refined, with nice touches of stately wit, and I enjoyed this performance while seeing that my colleague AS, in his review last April, has a valid point in looking for more vigour in this characterful music.
The second CD of this set begins with that most celebrated of the Mozart serenades, Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Few listeners will fail to enjoy this expert account by the ASMF under Marriner, though if I had to be a devil's advocate I would say that it is a trifle bland and soft-centred, save perhaps in the Minuet, and that this is emphasized by the resonant Abbey Road recording. On the same disc, the D major Flute Quartet receives an 'on-the-toes' kind of performance from the players, who include Menuhin as the violinist. But there is what I can only describe as an unintegrated, bitty quality about this ensemble as if they are not quite unanimous in their approach, which I think would deter me from repeated listening; a little audience noise is heard too, in this live recording. The Clarinet Quintet is better, and that fine player Sabine Meyer is as smoothly mellow as anyone could wish, but I have heard performances which give it a wider variety of moods and colours. Ultimately I find the sound too ripe and bassy, while the famous Larghetto is a little deliberate in delivery; the same clarinettist and her colleagues are more effective in the Kegelstatt Trio, K498, on the fourth CD.
The second disc also includes the first of the piano works, while the others are on the third. Aldo Ciccolini is stylish in the Variations, K265, on a theme that is the same as Twinkle, twinkle, little star, but his recording is not as good as that accorded to Christian Zacharias in the misleadingly nicknamed ''Easy'' C major Sonata. Zacharias, however, prettifies Mozart (and adds ornaments of his own to the printed text) and his curiously deliberate tempo for the finale seems designed to make room for the ornaments! I prefer Andrei Gavrilov in the A major Sonata with its 'Turkish Rondo' finale, but here too I feel the pianist is too self-conscious to sound really natural and the Minuet is strangely slow. Emile Naoumov, of Russian extraction but now based in France, is a sensitive artist and if his account of the C minor Fantasia, K396, is a bit understated that is no bad thing, though like DJF in his original review of this performance I find the faint background hiss a bit distracting (which is a pity since the piano sound is good). This third CD begins with the Alban Berg Quartet and the wonderfully tense and complex D minor String Quartet: this is a powerfully dramatic reading although the recording is reverberant for this music, not least in the Minuet third movement. On the final CD, the first of the duo sonatas is played by a flute, instead of a violin, and a clattery fortepiano: this nineteenth-century flute transcription does not, I think, provide a happy sound to hear and one wonders why it was chosen for this collection, though the playing is fluent enough. The second has a violin, as Mozart intended, and a modern piano and here, rightly, one is conscious first of the music itself and only then of the expert players. Finally, the Horn Quintet (from the same disc as Sabine Meyer's account of the Clarinet Quintet), is, though not memorable as music, attractively played to round off an issue which, to improve on the proverbial curate's egg, is very good in parts.'