Happily for the success of Capriccio's projected series of Mozart's serenades and divertimentos with Sandor Vegh and the Salzburg Camerata, this second issue in the series generally avoids the shortcomings I noted in the first (C27 157; CD 10 153, 6/87). These are delightfully bold and fresh readings of Mozart works early and late, sympathetic and well paced, and recorded vividly with plenty of presence in a very apt, relatively intimate acoustic.
The slow movement of Eine kleine Nachtmusik does hint at earlier reservations in the heaviness of the Romanze, taken slowly with none too sweet a violin line, but that is very much an exception. The other three movements of that favourite Serenade are exhilaratingly done, and so are the two so-called ''Salzburg'' Symphonies, with the fast speeds challenging the players but never sounding breathless, always well sprung with fine, crisp articulation. The oddity is that Vegh—on what authority I do not know—opts to re-arrange the order of movements in K137, making it a conventional fast-slow-fast piece. Neither the label nor the note recognizes that change, but musically as Vegh presents it, I find the result more satisfying than the regular, unconventional order, as used in the fine but rather less sympathetic performance from the ASMF, reviewed on page 766.
The Serenata notturna has similarly colourful and forthright qualities, and the only reservation to note is that Vegh does not observe the second half repeat in the first movement. Sir Colin Davis on his Novalis issue with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra does so, but by comparison this is a heavy account of a delightful work, not helped by the reverberant recording, which inflates the ensemble. Speeds in the last two movements are virtually identical with Vegh's, but the result is strangely lumbering by comparison.
Happily the main work on the disc—the Posthorn—brings a far more sympathetic performance, still very much on an orchestral rather than a chamber scale but with expressive detail that for many will make it more attractively characterful than chamber performances. So the tragic D minor Andantino (neither repeat observed) is taken at a slower speed than usual with expressive phrasing to relate it directly to the romantic mood of Don Giovanni. Even Karl Bohm in his traditional reading, now reissued in the DG Galleria series, is much lighter in his treatment, and so is Janos Rolla and the Franz Liszt orchestra on the new Hungaroton version.
Davis's is the more individual reading, marginally less crisp in ensemble but with some delightful solo playing. Rolla's comes into direct rivalry with Sir Neville Marriner's with the St Martin's Academy (Philips), which similarly provides an apt frame for the seven movements of the Posthorn Serenade in the two D major Marches, K335/320a.
Both can be warmly recommended, if you want a performance on a chamber scale, Marriner the more elegant, Rolla the more direct with sound set in a rather more intimate, immediate acoustic. Rolla's posthorn in the second trio of the sixth movement Minuet is particularly bright and attractive, with vibrato making it sound very much like a bugle. That and much else gives the performance extra bite compared with Marriner, though the manner is plainer.'