The common denominator here is the big Serenade, K185, commissioned by the Antretter family of Salzburg and first performed in August 1773 as a Finalmusik celebrating the end of the university year. Like other works of its kind it incorporates a miniature two-movement violin concerto within a loose symphonic framework: an Andante designed to display the instrument's powers of cantilena, and a brisk contredanse with plenty of opportunities for ear-catching virtuosity. There is also a violin solo in the glum D minor trio of the second minuet. But the finest movements in the serenade are to my mind the sensuous A major Andante grazioso, with its colourful concertante writing for flutes and horns, and the rollicking 6/8 finale, preceded by an unexpectedly searching Adagio introduction.
Unless you insist on period instruments in this repertoire, you won't go far wrong with either of the performances here. Both are stylish, alive and affectionate, with first-rate contributions from the solo violinists Jean-Jacques Kantorow, on the Denon disc, has an appealingly sweet, rather slender tone, and his articulation in rapid passagework is marvellously clean and elegant. Arvid Engegard is fractionally less pure of tone though, perhaps inspired by Vegh, his playing is often that much more individual in its phrasing and colouring. And it is just because of its sharper, more arresting individuality that I would plump for the Salzburg performance as a whole. In each movement Vegh and his players seem to me to respond a little more vividly to the specific character of the music, with a more fastidious attention to details of phrasing and texture and a greater rhythmic subtlety. The two minuets, for instance, are pleasantly relaxed under Hager; but with Vegh they are that much more vital, the first properly swaggering, with a nicely judged lilt in the trio, the second spruce and quick-witted. Hager and Kantorow, incidentally, slow down drastically in the D minor trio here, an effect I find unconvincing. Hager's performance of the lovely Andante grazioso is quite persuasive; but Vegh has the edge both in the characterization of the individual ideas (the first theme eloquently shaped, the second lighter and more buoyant than with Hager) and his long-term rhythmic control.
Both performances are arguably too leisurely in the finale, though Vegh's has a more springing gait—as occasionally elsewhere, Hager's basses are a shade heavy. And on both discs I could have done with more incisive trumpets and horns in the D major movements, where textures tend to be too string-dominated. You'll notice that Vegh includes the March, K189, which would have served both as a prelude and an epilogue to the serenade in Mozart's day; its absence from the Hager disc is a pity, as is the omission of all the exposition repeats.
From here onwards the two discs go their separate ways. Hager offers another expansive serenade, K204, written for the 1775 university end-of-year celebrations. In design it closely resembles K185, with two movements featuring solo violin and an Andante with rich concertante writing for wind—here flute, oboe, bassoon and horns. The first movement has an altogether grander sweep than that of the earlier work, while the entertaining finale, anticipating that of the Fourth Violin Concerto later the same year, alternates a slow march with energetic episodes in triple time. Hager's performance, like that of K185, is alert and sympathetic, with poised and precise solo violin playing (the stratospherics in the trio of the first minuet brilliantly despatched); there is a fine stride to the rhythms in the faster movements, though the Andante moderato second movement struck me as a shade sluggish, with insufficient sense of direction in the repeated-note accompaniments. But anyone fancying this coupling of two of Mozart's most ambitious teenage orchestral works is unlikely to be disappointed here. The recording is spacious and agreeably reverberant, and the disc's appeal is enhanced by lucid and exceptionally detailed notes by the Japanese scholar Yasuhiko Mori.
Vegh follows the Serenade, K185, with five contredanses dating from Mozart's last year and the Notturno for four orchestras, exquisitely imagined open-air music, with its multiple echoes fading into the summer night. To all this music Vegh and his hand-picked Salzburg players bring the same style, elan and minute care for detail that characterized their performance of K185. The dances are deft and light of gait, their wit and colour relished to the full; and the four 'orchestras' (each consisting of solo strings and a pair of horns) bring a deliciously languid tenderness to the opening Andante of the Notturno. All in all a highly desirable disc, offering an attractively varied concert of Mozart's lighter music performed with exceptional flair and finesse. The recording, too, is outstandingly vivid, rather more intimate than on the Denon disc, with the spatial effects in the Notturno beautifully managed.'