Early music conductor Reinhard Goebel, here leading his modern-instrument but historical performance-influenced Berliner Barock Solisten, states in his notes this album that his aim was to approach Mozart's serenades as if he had never heard them before. That's not a bad idea, of course, for many of the performance traditions associated with Mozart have come down from the 19th century. As with many performances with an explicitly revisionist aim, listener reactions to this one will necessarily be personal. Goebel's ...
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Early music conductor Reinhard Goebel, here leading his modern-instrument but historical performance-influenced Berliner Barock Solisten, states in his notes this album that his aim was to approach Mozart's serenades as if he had never heard them before. That's not a bad idea, of course, for many of the performance traditions associated with Mozart have come down from the 19th century. As with many performances with an explicitly revisionist aim, listener reactions to this one will necessarily be personal. Goebel's performances fall into the category of those by Baroque groups that are not entirely at home in Classical-era music, and the opening Serenade in D major, K. 239, the so-called "Serenata Notturna," lacks a nocturnal or even a serenade atmosphere. Goebel seems to have been led by the Baroque movements (March and Rondeau) to favor crisp, even abrupt phrasing that is hard to imagine as appropriate given the work's light-entertainment purpose. As if to emphasize his seeming discomfort, Goebel...
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