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03/22/2025
“Haffner-Akademie”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492: “Giunse alfin il momento... Deh vieni, non tardar” – Così fan tutte, K. 588: “Temerari, sortite... Come scoglio” – Die Entführung aus dem Serail, K. 384: “Welcher Wechsel herrscht... Traurigkeit ward mir zum Lose” – Idomeneo, K. 366: “Oh smania! Oh furie!... D’Oreste, d’Aiace” & “Se il padre perdei” – Symphony n° 35 in D major “Haffner”, K. 385 – La clemenza di Tito, K. 621: “Ecco il punto, o Vitellia... Non più di fiori” – Ch’io mi scordi di te?, K. 505 [1]
Anna Prohaska (soprano), Herbert Schuch [1] (piano), Ensemble Resonanz, Barbara Bultmann (concertmaster), Riccardo Minasi (conductor)
Recording: Friedrich-Ebert-Halle, Hamburg, Germany (October 2022) – 69’08
harmonia mundi HMM 902704 (Distributed by [Integral]) – Booklet in French, English and German – Libretto in French, Italian, English and German
 
The booklet doesn’t explain what exactly the “Haffner” Symphony is supposed to do with the various operatic and concert arias gathered alongside it here. We start in any case not with the symphony that gives the program its enigmatic title but with “Deh vieni, non tardar” from Le nozze di Figaro, and this gives a good sense of the qualitative range of the whole program. From the introductory recitative we can hear that the orchestral playing so studiously avoids vibrato that the intent may as well be to show off the ensemble’s exceptional intonation; certainly there is no musical reason for it when taken to this extreme, and on what sounds to me like modern instruments, it adds an unpleasant steeliness, although one can get used to it.
The conductor’s occasional fussiness is another matter; one gets a glimpse of it here in some extreme rubato where a lightly flexible beat would suffice. I was happy to focus instead on Anna Prohaska’s robust, intelligently deployed soprano. Her timbre is full and not at all unattractive, but she is definitely more concerned with expressive and dramatic delivery of the text than with the beauty of tone per se. Her phrasing is musical enough, in fact, that beauty of tone becomes an afterthought to the listener. (In this respect the effect is not dissimilar to Callas, though the voices, per se, are not alike, and those allergic to Callas’s timbral and technical oddities need not worry here.) Is there nonetheless an occasional whiff of mannerism in all the attention to detail? Maybe.
Happily, Così fan tutte’s “Come scoglio” is an even better showcase for Prohaska, who navigates the music’s many leaps with total security and no showing off; everything makes musical sense. Here there is no question of a whiff of mannerism. And the arias from Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Idomeneo find her absolutely in her element as such a dramatically intelligent singer. The booklet is not wrong to find a certain expressionism in the vehemence of the latter; Prohaska realizes this, like the raw sadness of the former, with total conviction, and Minasi follows her sympathetically and, at times, with great fire.
The “Haffner” which comes next—interrupting the vocal recital—is another matter. The visceral excitement of the opening, and much of the rest of the work, is undermined by lots of arbitrary hairpin dynamics and some fussy phrasing, all pointless disturbance of the line. This kind of crude self‑consciousness is hardly the only way to rescue Mozart from the overly delicate porcelain‑doll treatment. The composer took care to imbue all his music, whatever its dramatic implications, with vocal lyricism, and even his instrumental music needs to sing more naturally than this often does. A touch of vibrato wouldn’t hurt in that respect, either.
The remainder of the program brings no surprises. Minasi seems to be generally better behaved as an accompanist, and in any case, it is hard not to pay more attention to the consistently involved singing. There is a place for creamier‑voiced Mozart singing, with greater expressive simplicity; this “Deh vieni, non tardar” does not put Hilde Gueden’s exquisite Susanna under Erich Kleiber out of mind. But Prohaska is often magnificently compelling on her more psychological terms, and this release would merit a stronger recommendation if the conducting were more consistently tasteful, especially in the “Haffner”—the inclusion of which, by the way, means we only get about forty minutes of vocal music. Texts and translations (English, French, German or Italian where applicable) are included.
Samuel Wigutow
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