Mozart’s Divertimenti for strings with horns
- and clarinets in the case of K113 - are rare visitors to the
concert hall, perhaps partly because of their scoring which rarely
fits neatly into concert programmes. This makes these discs especially
welcome as not only are they also comparatively rarely recorded,
but when they are it has often been by chamber orchestras. Here
they are played by soloists, giving them a wholly different character.
Better still those soloists are members of The Vienna Octet.
Despite its name the “Octet” it was in fact a flexibly constituted
group of players, almost all members of the Vienna Philharmonic,
founded by Alfred and Willi Boskovsky who played clarinet and
violin respectively. They made recordings for over twenty years
from 1947 but the present discs contain performances from the
first half of that period, from 1950 to 1957. Whether this was
in general a “golden age” for Mozart performances in Vienna –
the disc’s subtitle - one may doubt despite the undoubted distinction
of the ensemble at the State Opera at that time, but certainly
the performances here are well worth resurrecting. They may lack
the historical awareness of current performances and the recording
does tend at times to favour the first violin at the expense of
the rest of the strings, but the players’ subtle phrasing, sweetness
of tone and sheer delight in the changing character of the music
is irresistible. Played like this I am in no doubt that these
pieces work best with solo instruments. Even better, in K287 the
bass line is played only by a double-bass – the splendid Johann
Krump who plays throughout the discs – without the cello who doubles
him at the octave in the other works. The effect is to make the
scoring sound even more transparent, and to give the rhythms even
more point.
The earliest work is K113 in which Mozart makes one of his earliest
uses of clarinets. The oboe, cor anglais and bassoon parts he
added for later performances are omitted here making the clarinet
parts even more prominent even if this does remove the very quirky
colours of the later version. This is an altogether astonishing
work, to my mind of much greater interest than the Symphonies
from the same date (1771) and it is played to perfection here.
Most short repeats are taken but not all of those of the longer
expositions. Tully Potter’s notes place both the Vienna Octet
and these Divertimenti in an appropriate context. All in all here
are two discs that remind us of works and performers both of which
are unfairly neglected.
John Sheppard
Wiener Oktett (Willi Boskovsky, Philipp Matheis (violins); Günther
Breitenbach (viola); Nikolaus Hübner (cello); Johann Krump (double-bass);
Alfred Boskovsky, Christian Cubasch (clarinets); Josef Veleba, Otto
Nitsch (horns)) 
