VA - Mozart: Une petite musique de nuit, Serenades & Nocturnes (2023)

Three exquisite serenades, six caressing nocturnes and a meditative lied invite you to celebrate with Mozart the “beautiful night, clearer than the day”. Let's leave the Queen of the Night to her devious or furious sparkle, let's leave Don Juan to his mandolin, but let's enjoy with him the "beautiful night, clearer than the day" that Mozart, this great giver of serenades, celebrates. However, the serenata for instrumental ensemble is defined first of all as outdoor music, less necessarily linked to the night than to places of pleasure, real or fantasized – in Così fan tutte, it's in the garden, the after- noon, let the two fake strangers intone their serenata.

So here are three expressly nocturnal serenades. Shortly before Don Giovanni, A Little Night Music (Vienna, August 1787) has often suffered from being unfolded as a predictable and opulent gallantry. In 1960, Ferenc Fricsay, conducting the strings of the Berlin Philharmonic, was hardly equal in making its delicacy, the flesh, the secret quiverings felt. The Romance sings, like Belmonte weeping with joy in The Abduction from the Seraglio, but the rhythmic design is never neglected, right down to the irrepressible vitality of the Rondo. Papagena, are you here already?

outside and inside
More than ten years earlier, Mozart provided for the Salzburg festivities. The Serenata notturna brings together two small orchestras (strings and timpani) in an exquisite mix: majesty, elegance and fantasy (the finale plays at changing cuts and tempos). Colin Davis superbly balanced the tension and the charm. The same year 1959, Peter Maag is a marvelous guide (what a port!) in the suggestive Notturno where the orchestra, associating strings and horns (cackling if necessary), is divided into four groups to reduce echoes, to arouse distances: gardens imaginary. From the Andante to the Minuet, the rococo party turns into an endless dream.

Back to Vienna. The six Notturni (1786-1788) pair two sopranos and a bass with a trio of reeds (basset horns or clarinets). The posthumous title of the collection does not respond to the lyrical verses (borrowed in part from Metastasis) but to the destination of these canzoni: the musical evenings where Mozart joined his friend Gottfried von Jacquin and his sister Franziska. The intimacy of this caressing and collected music, which seems so simple and requires so much tact, is ideally served by Christine Schäfer, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and their Berlin partners – thanks to the publisher Orfeo.

With the song Abendempfindung (1787), evening falls, the moon is already shining, the west wind carries a presentiment, that of a rest called death. On the grave, later, the friend will shed a tear – “the most beautiful pearl”. When Mozart serenely lends a hand to romanticism, Irmgard Seefried and Gerald Moore in 1950 offer four minutes of mystery, sensation and meditation mixed together. So the night.

Groups & Artists
Berliner Philharmoniker
London Symphony Orchestra
Moore, Gerald
Philharmonia Orchestra
Seefried, Irmgard

Tracklist
01. Berliner Philharmoniker, Ferenc Fricsay - « Eine kleine Nachtmusik » KV 525 - Allegro (05:45)
02. Berliner Philharmoniker, Ferenc Fricsay - « Eine kleine Nachtmusik » KV 525 - Romanza (Andante) (06:39)
03. Berliner Philharmoniker, Ferenc Fricsay - « Eine kleine Nachtmusik » KV 525 - Menuetto (Allegretto) (02:09)
04. Berliner Philharmoniker, Ferenc Fricsay - « Eine kleine Nachtmusik » KV 525 - Rondo (Allegro) (03:28)
05. London Symphony Orchestra, Peter Maag - Serenade KV 286 « Notturno » - Andante (04:46)
06. London Symphony Orchestra, Peter Maag - Serenade KV 286 « Notturno » - Allegro grazioso (02:53)
07. London Symphony Orchestra, Peter Maag - Serenade KV 286 « Notturno » - Menuetto (08:20)
08. Philharmonia Orchestra, Colin Davis - Serenade KV 239 « Serenata notturna » - Marcia (04:37)
09. Philharmonia Orchestra, Colin Davis - Serenade KV 239 « Serenata notturna » - Menuetto, Trio (03:57)
10. Philharmonia Orchestra, Colin Davis - Serenade KV 239 « Serenata notturna » - Rondeau (04:48)
11. Christine Schafer, Gundula Hintz, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau - Notturno KV 346 - Luci care, luci belle (01:34)
12. Christine Schafer, Gundula Hintz, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau - Notturno KV 436 - Ecco quel fiero istante (01:55)
13. Christine Schafer, Gundula Hintz, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau - Notturno KV 437 - Mi lagnero tacendo (03:51)
14. Christine Schafer, Gundula Hintz, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau - Notturno KV 438 - Se lontan, ben mio, tu sei (01:56)
15. Christine Schafer, Gundula Hintz, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau - Notturno KV 439 - Due pupille amabili (01:09)
16. Christine Schafer, Gundula Hintz, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau - Notturno KV 549 - Piu non si trovano (01:55)
17. Irmgard Seefried, Gerald Moore - Abendempfindung KV 523 (04:32)