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Mozart: Entführung, ’49/Streich, Fricsay

Robert Levine

Artistic Quality:

Sound Quality:

This 1949 RIAS performance of Abduction has much to recommend it, as well as a few problems. Ferenc Fricsay is a superb Mozartean, capable of asking for a racket in the Turkish episodes and great tenderness in, say, Belmonte’s outpourings of love for Konstanze, and he gets the strings to slither around Osmin’s music to underline both the character’s foolishness and creepiness. The orchestra plays well.

Sari Barabas was a Hungarian soprano with a very bright sound (enhanced, and not always pleasantly, by the garish recording). She knows the role of Konstanze inside out and her voice sits high enough never to strain; I believe this was a one-take-only broadcast, and given that, Barabas’ singing is remarkably accurate. The voice lacks warmth, but her attention to the words makes up for it and only a few notes go awry. Anton Dermota makes a smooth Belmonte with a beautiful tone; he is spared the last-act “Ich baue ganz”, and that’s probably for the best–agility is not his long suit. Rita Streich is at her freshest and most pert as Blonde; Helmut Krebs, known mostly as an oratorio singer, does what he can with Pedrillo. Josef Greindl is a near-perfect Osmin from top to bottom–funny and menacing at once. The spoken dialog is taken by actors, and it’s really annoying–this and the sonics are the set’s real problems.

Among the bonuses, we get Fricsay conducting Clara Haskil in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20. The first movement is nicely threatening, the second is warm with correctly placed outbursts, and the third is poised properly for its major-key turnaround. Someone in the live Berlin audience was obviously tuberculin and may not have made it past the first movement. The Serenata Notturna receives a fine reading, also live from Berlin. It’s a matter of Fricsay and the singers, then–there’s much to admire, but there also are some other fine Abductions on the market.

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Recording Details:

Reference Recording: Böhm (DG)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART - Die Entführung aus dem Serail Bonus: Fricsay conducts Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 ('54, Berlin); Serenata Notturna K. 239 (’51, Berlin)

  • Record Label: Myto - CD032.H076
  • Medium: CD

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