Virtuosos of past eras, including performer-composers represented on this interesting CD, mostly played music of their own time. The modern virtuoso faces no such restriction, or, to put it negatively, the modern virtuoso has to conquer a range of historic styles. This is easier if they are homogenized by performance on, say, a modern grand piano, a Boehm-system clarinet or a horn with valves. Hence refusal to homogenize is much to the credit of virtuosos such as Anneke Scott and her colleagues. No doubt Scott can handle a modern horn, but she can also range from the Baroque into the nineteenth century, fitting the instrument to the music for which it was conceived, and she provides an informative and scholarly note (bar the wrong date and number for Mozart's wind Sinfonia concertante: recte 1778, and k297).
The title ‘Stolen Beauties’ invites comment on musical theft, but is specious. Mozart, like Bach and Gluck before him, took ideas from others, but – with one possible exception – the works in this collection were not generated by enhancing a model, like Mozart when reworking Handel (Requiem: Introit and Kyrie). Writing variations on a borrowed theme is not theft, nor is arrangement. The longer pieces are punctuated by single movements, of two or three minutes, from a duet by Giovanni Punto (Jan Václav Stich, 1748–1803), the virtuoso for whom Beethoven wrote his horn sonata. To hear the whole work (Allegro moderato – Adagio – Presto) in sequence requires track-skipping. If there is theft or appropriation, it's the replacement of the original second instrument (bassoon) by a cello, deftly played by Daniel Yeadon but emphatically a support to the more robust sonority of the horn.
Two more horn virtuosos are invoked in Scott's notes: Giovanni Puzzi (1792–1876) and Ignaz Leutgeb (c1745–1811). The first enters via a set of variations on ‘Là ci darem la mano’, which is anonymous, but the manuscript is associated with Puzzi. The tune was also ‘stolen’ for variations by Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and, if a catalogue of 1828 is to be believed, Berlioz (that work is lost). Here the horn is accompanied by strings, very much in a supportive role (unlike the Mozart quintet); public performance, before an audience, rather than in the home, is no doubt intended. A sombre introduction invokes Weber, a natural model for such pieces, rather than Mozart. It would be good to know who wrote it, although it hardly stands out from a host of such pieces. The variations effectively alternate between extreme virtuosity and less showy diminutions, and the work ends with a nicely judged quiet coda.
After the Punto Presto, the CD ends with what, were one inclined, one might consider the only masterpiece on the disc. Mozart's Horn Quintet (k407/386c), with its two-viola string quartet, is finely played; the finale's cadenza (or rather Eingang) is perhaps overdone, but one can only admire the brilliance of Scott's playing, and enjoy the seductive unevenness of the hand-stopped pitches. I doubt if Leutgeb (for whom the piece was written) did it better. As there is no charge of theft to answer, k407 could seem out of place but for the fact that the CD also includes what may or may not be an arrangement of Mozart. Michael Haydn's Romance in A flat for horn and string quartet presents us with a conundrum: is it an adaptation of Mozart? or is the second movement of Mozart's last completed Horn Concerto (k447) an adaptation of this work by Haydn? As Scott argues in her note, given some uncertainty over dates of composition, it could be either. Following the Haydn recording while reading Mozart's score is mildly surreal. The difference of genre is marked: where the melody is the same, Haydn's bass and inner parts are more mobile. Is he elaborating Mozart, or did Mozart highlight his concerto soloist by simplifying the accompaniment? Each work has passages not represented in the other. Mozart interpolated orchestral material in places where Haydn's horn part is continuous; either he had in mind Leutgeb's breathing (see the tart comments in the manuscript of the unfinished Rondo for the Concerto in D major) or Haydn preferred more continuity for the soloist. Scott seems cautiously to suggest that Haydn's work came first, but the evidence appears inconclusive.
As a pleasant addition to the chamber repertoire Haydn's piece recalls ‘Wagner's’ Adagio (actually by Heinrich Baermann, 1784–1847) for clarinet quintet. Which brings me to the oddest and least satisfactory item, and the one most deserving the epithet ‘stolen’: tracks 5–7, entitled ‘Concertante for the pianoforte, horn, viola and violoncello arranged from a Sonata by Mozart’. Musical arrangements can be effective, but most, at least in the nineteenth century, are piano reductions, permitting amateurs to purchase music in a form playable at home; this also applies to the 1809 ‘sonata’ created from Mozart's clarinet quintet (reissued by Bärenreiter, edited by Christopher Hogwood). This type of arrangement might seem redundant in the era of recording, although piano-duet arrangements remain highly enjoyable to play. Some reduced versions were authorized by composers: by Beethoven, for instance, whose trio version of the Septet (clarinet, cello and piano) has its own opus number (38). The ‘Concertante . . . from a Sonata by Mozart’ is actually the ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio (k498), for clarinet (or violin), viola and piano. Admittedly this could be considered a three-movement sonata. But the arrangement by Barham Livius (1787–1865) does not have the excuse of making the piece useful for domestic consumption; it is not a reduction, having an extra instrument (cello, perhaps to compensate for the strength of horn tone relative to clarinet), and the title implies concert performance, with the horn inevitably more a soloist than the original clarinet.
Yet, curiously, the performance can claim a kind of authenticity, as Scott is playing a horn that once belonged to Livius. It dates from 1814, and was modified by the addition of valves while still requiring hand-stopping in places. The only change to the music's form is the omission of the coda to the second movement (Minuet and Trio), oddly called ‘bold’ by Scott; it at least avoids discrepancies between the manuscript and the first publication of Mozart's trio. But the modification of texture, and of detail, is extensive, even though the piano and viola parts remain largely intact. The cello contributes melodically in the bass and other registers. The clarinet part is occasionally transferred to the strings, but mostly to the horn, causing a radical transformation of the original texture because the horn inevitably plays nearly everything an octave lower.
At this point I should declare an interest, as a clarinettist: the ‘Kegelstatt’ is a cherished part of my chamber repertoire. But as with other arrangements for ensembles surprisingly different from what the composer had in mind, one has to ask: why do it? Here it may have been simply to enhance the repertoire for horn – although the instrument could participate in wind quintets, quintets with piano, as with Mozart's k452, and larger ensembles spawned by Beethoven's ever-popular Septet. And the effect is less intimate, less chamber-like, because, aside from a few quasi-orchestral sustained or punctuating notes, the horn stands out where the clarinet blends or discreetly accompanies. The horn rests for the first part of the Trio, intervening in the second part (for once an octave higher than the bass motive, originally on piano); this integrates well with the connecting passage before the da capo. Changes of detail in the horn part include a diatonic version of Mozart's chromatic scale (first movement, bar 12) to accommodate the relatively inflexible lower register.
Issues of performance practice might seem secondary given the transformation of Mozart's texture; a lover of the original should be excused for finding Mozart/Livius rather stodgy, but this is not the players’ fault. Where the keyboard plays alone, modifications to the original are least apparent; some tasteful added ornamentation I suppose to be the natural response of the pianist, Neal Peres Da Costa. Performance style suggests the early nineteenth century: spread piano chords were no doubt idiomatic then, as were adjustments to the metrical flow. Some of this is pleasing, but the too-frequent delaying of first beats becomes mannered. The horn and string portamenti in the Minuet (not the first time, but in the repeat, bars 19–20, and the written-out da capo) are isolated, and seem stylistically alien. But these are minor blemishes on generally sensitive and thoughtful performances.
