The Flute and Harp Concerto is one of the most charming things Mozart ever wrote. It always surprises me that more artists don't record it. Still, there are plenty of good recordings of it to choose among, and this one from flutist Per Flemstrom and harpist Birgitte Volan Havik with Alan Buribayev conducting the Oslo Philharmonic takes its place among the best. It's a lovely work, given a lovely performance. The Sinfonia Concertante for Four Winds as a coupling is like icing on the cake.Mozart wrote his Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra in C Major, K. 299, in 1778, and, interestingly, it's the only concerto he wrote that includes a harp. Given that people back then still considered the harp an unusual instrument, there wasn't much of a repertoire for it as yet, and listeners found Mozart's combination of flute and harp rather unique. Anyway, my own favorite recording of the concerto is the one featuring Jean-Pierre Rampal and Lilly Laskine on the Erato label, which is neither here nor there except to say that the pairing of Flemstrom and Havik does not suffer by comparison.
Maestro Buribayev and his Oslo players maintain an expressive musical demeanor throughout the concerto, and the soloists play with grace and finesse. Above all, this concerto needs a relaxed, flowing gait, and that's exactly the way Buribayev leads it, taking a cultured, refined approach yet one with a positive, pleasing countenance, too. As I say, it's a lovely performance, with an especially beautiful slow movement in which the performers bring out all of the music's most-shimmering, radiant qualities.
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| Alan Buribayev |
For the Sinfonia we get an entirely different set of soloists, of course, but also a different conductor, Arvid Engegard. Whatever, the work sounds happy enough, and the soloists are all quite good at their jobs. OK, I thought Buribayev might have brought a slightly greater sense of exuberance to his part of the show than Engegard does, while Engegard follows a bit more-exacting course. Still, the final Andante con variazoni comes off with more than a little pizzazz and makes a fitting ending for the program.
Producer Vegard Landaas and engineers Arne Akselberg and Thomas Wolden recorded the music at the Oslo Concert Hall, Oslo, Norway in November 2012 and January 2013. They made the album for hybrid SACD playback, so you have the choice of two-channel stereo or multichannel playback using an SACD player or two-channel stereo from a standard CD player. I listened to the disc's SACD layer in two-channel stereo.
The sound appears extremely well balanced in terms of left-to-right stereo spread and overall frequency response. No part of the range stands out as too bright or too dull, and the solo instruments appear well integrated into the rest of the ensemble, not too far forward from the rest of the orchestra. The dynamic range seems a little restricted, and there isn't a lot of impact involved, but that's perhaps as it should be with this kind of music. Bass and treble extensions are also a bit limited, and midrange transparency is only moderate. Nevertheless, it's a fairly natural sound, coming through pretty much as one would hear this music in a concert hall from a modest distance.
JJP
To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:
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