SCO Winds - Mozart: Divertimenti - Hi-Fi News

Most collectors will have discovered the Mozart Divertimenti and Serenades via Decca and its mono / stereo LP series with various Viennese ensembles, from the time of WIIII Boskovsky. Linn's enjoyable programme with the SCO players - pairs of clarinets, horns and bassoons - has more of an ‘outdoors' style, fresh and open. The works chosen are varied in form: K375 has two menuetto e trio movements (KH has been mentioning one in recent reviews); the F major K253 has an opening set of variations; K252/240a includes a Polonaise. One oddity with Philip Hobbs' production, I thought, is that you hear the bassoons (and a certain amount of key clicking) on the left, answered by clarinets on the right. But it's easy to reverse channels if you think ‘treble' ought - as with an orchestra - to be on the left.

LAB REPORT

Recorded by Philip Hobbs at the Stevenson Hall, this is a clean 192kHz rendering with an excess of bandwidth to capture the ~30kHz extension of the clarinet's upper harmonics Dynamic range/headroom is also generous. PM