Mozart Serenades - SCO - The Strad

Recorded in a warm, reverberant church acoustic, this disc features elegant and polished accounts of two of Mozart's ‘Salzburg' serenades (K113 and K185) and three of his single-movement works for violin and orchestra. Mozart's Serenade K185 (Andretter), introduced by a celebratory March (K189), features lively and incisive orchestral playing, particularly in the opening Allegro assai and the exuberant finale. Violinist-director Alexander Janiczek contributes a sonorous solo cantabile in the Andante and some lively passagework in the Allegro's episodes. He is also refined and gracefully expressive in both minuet movements, especially the minor-mode trio of the second.

Janiczek is warmly communicative in the Adagio K261, even if his dynamic range seems limited. His characterful reading of the Rondo concertante K269 includes passages of lively dialogue with the orchestra, but his Eingänge over-inflate the work's Rococo gesturing. He is by turns lyrical and brilliant in the Rondo K373, demonstrating a natural response to Mozartian line and phrase.