Flute Concerto No. 2, K314
Bassoon Concerto, K191
Sinfonia Concertante for Four Winds, K297b
Juliette Bausor Flute
Jonathan Davies Bassoon
Ian Hardwick Oboe
John Ryan Horn
Thomas Watmough Clarinet
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski
LPO 0114
Full Price
The Review
These days it has become quite unusual to hear Mozart’s small orchestra works played by a Philharmonic band rather than a specialist chamber or period orchestra. Big name conductors tend to shy away from them too, perhaps conscious of the potential damage to their reputations if they appear heavy-handed. So for the LPO and Jurowski to release these recordings now is a very much more courageous move than it would have been fifty years ago.
The result is an unmitigated success, not least because it showcases the orchestra’s principal wind players who are naturally in perfect partnership with the colleagues they play with every day. Jurowski judges it right too, largely by keeping out of the way. And because the recordings were made over three days (at the end of 2017) in the orchestra’s rehearsal venue, Henry Wood Hall – a converted baroque church in Southwark – the performances of these early Mozart works (all written when he was travelling across Europe alone for the first time between the ages of 18 and 21) are delightfully relaxed.
The balance between soloists and strings favours the wind a little two much in the Sinfonia Concertante, losing some of the benefit of having the full sound of modern strings, but the performers themselves mesh immaculately. The oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn are involved in the Sinfonia and it is here that the quality of the ensemble can be enjoyed at its best. John Ryan’s horn and Thomas Watmough’s clarinet blend especially beautifully in the Adagio. The bouncy precision the soloists bring to the final variations is a delight.
Flautist Juliette Bausor has always been impressive. Six years ago she was picked as one of the European Concert Hall Organisation’s Rising Stars and she was a finalist in BBC Young Musician of the Year, as well as winning the Royal Over-Seas League’s gold medal. The sign to her true path, however, was her win in the Shell-London Symphony Orchestra’s awards which was designed to hear young musicians in the orchestral context that was likely to frame their professional lives. Bausor shows why in her performance here. She varies the dynamics intricately so that no phrase is bland, drawing an arc across Mozart’s elegant passage work and guiding us through each section pointing out all the possibilities along the way. She can be playful but also finds the lyrical heart, imagined originally by Mozart for the oboe which explains the long breath lines that tax the flautist more than they would her companion. Bausor just sails. She must be one of the most gifted at her craft since the great Emily Beynon joined the Concertgebuow many years ago.
Jonathan Davies is suitably mellifluous in the Bassoon concerto too, though his phrasing is not as imaginative as Bausor’s. Perhaps here a touch more input from Jurowski would have been helpful. Nonetheless it is an enjoyable reading and a worthy component of the disc. The highlights, though, are the Flute Concerto and the Sinfonia.
SM