Hot on the heels of Sir Charles Mackerras's excellent Prague version of the Posthorn Serenade for Telarc comes this rival just as stylish, and recorded with more immediate but still atmospheric sound against a more aptly intimate acoustic. After my August review, Sir Charles wrote to point that though I had reported on what sounded like "a rather large band for Mozart", the numbers were actually very modest—7.6.4.3.2. The Academy ensemble here can hardly be smaller than that, but the specific quality of their sound, set against a very believable acoustic, gives a clearer idea of an apt scale, and Sir Neville's pointing of rhythm is every bit as winning as Sir Charles's. The overall impression is even more light-hearted, when following general convention the D minor Andantino of the fourth movement is not given the funeral march overtones I noted in the Telarc version. There is also the question of the fill-up. Mackerras has Eine kleine Nachtmusik, where less generously but more aptly Marriner has the two D major Marches, the one before and the other afterwards. The excellent posthorn soloist in the trio of the second minuet, Michael Laird, is rightly named, but not the flute soloist in the concertante third movement, though I suspect it must be William Bennett, for so long an Academy star.
EG