For years Mozart's Oboe Concerto masqueraded as a work for flute: he'd transposed it hurriedly to meet a comminssion, and thus it stayed until 1948 when the good Herr Doktor Paumgartner raked up the manuscript in Salzburg. Gordon Hunt's performance makes the long-perpetuated disguise very credible. Compared with Holliger's lean, reedy silverpoint, with its rhythmic rigour and almost acid penetration (Philips), Hunt's oboe is a gentle, rounded, almost ethereal pipe. And the fact that, at his every entry, the LPO is almost artificially recessed as if in reverence has an emollient effect on the opening Allegro aperto.
So far, it will be entirely a matter of taste as to which style of playing pleases the ear. But in the second and third movements, Hunt's performance does begin to pall. Where Holliger's tauter tone and phrasing chisel out the minutest nuances of expression, Hunt's maintains an even, somewhat bland meditation. Hunt, too, is conducted, whereas Holliger directs himself, making for a more vigorous relationship with his orchestra. But the least attractive aspect of Hunt's performance is John Wallace's cadenzas: they serve the instrument, and frequently outstay their welcome, where Holliger's own serve the music itself in terse and pointed flights of fancy.
What this recording loses on Side 1, though, it gains on Side 2. Jonathan Snowden's is, in this case, a properly magic flute: far less breathy and overblown in its phrasing than that of Galway, tracing the simplest of lines through the Andantino, and adopting an urbane approach to the Rondo's fun and games. The recording balance allows the harp to be a more interesting, more equal partner; and Caryl Thomas's playing is more crisp, more excitingly tactile than the music-box effect of Helmis. Litton moves the Concerto—and it certainly needs to be nudged along—marginally fleeter than Karajan (EMI): I like his bright textures and well-ventilated phrasing.
Holliger's Oboe Concerto, by the way, is twinned with the K297 Sinfonia Concertante; Galway's flute and Harp with the G major Flute Concerto. It depends where you're willing to make the sacrifices...'