• Mozart’s glorious three last symphonies are an enduring mystery: why were they written so close together in the summer of 1788; where and when were they performed? Nikolaus Harnoncourt proposed that they were conceived as one “instrumental oratorio”, and now Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations have recorded them on two discs as The Symphonic Testament (Alia Vox). In an attempt to relate the three symphonies to each other, Savall includes No 39 and 40 on the first disc, then 40 and 41 on the second: a perfect opportunity to include the two differently scored versions of 40, but bizarrely he does not, just repeating the same performance – rather poor value.
This is a pity because, as usual with Savall, the performances have bags of energy and drive. The small number of strings play with sophisticated phrasing and the wind are excellent. The problem is that the boomy acoustic emphasises blaring single brass notes, and the timpani and basses have a woolly impact, which undermines the sharpness of the ensemble. Enjoyable, but a missed opportunity for something great.
• Mozart’s contemporary Haydn has been the subject of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s series of the Piano Sonatas (Chandos), now at Volume 8. Full of inventive, sometimes quirky music, these sonatas are animated by Bavouzet’s lively, crisply articulated approach. He uses the resources of the modern piano while adopting a period-style clarity: the great E flat Sonata No 59 is superb, and the revelation a single-movement Adagio in G: a mournful vision.
• Bavouzet has also been continuing with his Mozart piano concerto cycle (Chandos) with the Manchester Camerata under Gábor Takács-Nagy, and has reached the pinnacle of Nos 20 and 21. Part of No 21 was played the other day on Scala Radio, the new digital radio station offering “classical music for the modern world”. Sampling it, I hit Lang Lang at his most soft-edged, then heard a harmless, pleasant playlist of short tracks with some requests and chat with the amiable Simon Mayo. Hard to spot much difference between this and increasingly curated online streaming offers, but it adds to the wealth of choice, ads are not as dominant as on Classic, and Tippett, Zimmer, Bach and Bartók within an hour certainly keeps one guessing where next.
