Now we have Barbara
Bonney the music scholar, as well as
one of our brightest young light soprano
voices. Once again questing for unusual
repertoire, Bonney has discovered a
set of songs, which appear to be the
total output of Mozart’s youngest son.
Presumably his youngest, as Franz Xavier
Mozart was born in his father’s final
year, and genius that he was, I don’t
believe that even Mozart could circumvent
nature.
Bonney has now recorded
this collection of songs by the young
Mozart, and this music is so new, that
as yet Franz Xavier Mozart has yet to
have an entry in the RED listings. The
dates of composition, although some
are estimated, stretch from 1808 to
1829. Franz Xavier’s talent was obviously
in his genes, so to speak, as he was
only five months old when his father
died, and would thus not have been able
to learn from his father’s example.
He was taken in hand
by his mother who was determined that
the destitute Mozarts would take advantage
of any help she could get for her young
family. Franz Xavier was trained by
Sigismund Neukomm (one of Haydn’s pupils),
and Johann Nepomuk Hummel, gave the
young boy piano lessons. He learned
composition from Georg Joseph Vogler
and Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, to
say nothing of the singing lessons he
had from Salieri. With teachers of this
calibre, it is hardly surprising that
the young Mozart was able to turn his
hand to writing songs.
Later in his career,
he was to play his father’s concerti
in public, but like his father he died
at a fairly early age. Like his brother
he never married or had children and
therefore the Mozart bloodline came
to a permanent halt when the two brothers
passed away.
The songs here are
by their very nature fairly simple works
and whilst there is little or no influence
of his father in them, they are in the
general style of early Schubert or Weber.
Fairly straightforward
in form they have a disarming simplicity
which obviously attracted Barbara Bonney.
She says, in the booklet, that she loves
these songs, and hearing them in this
delectable new recording, one can be
sure that this is the case. Malcolm
Martineau, Bonney’s usual accompanist
does sterling work making these songs
sound much more than they are.
The recording quality
is very high, and there is a lovely
bloom with both piano and voice being
reproduced in the acoustic of a small
warm-sounding hall. There is not an
ugly moment to be heard on this superb
disc.
It is good to see,
in this age of mediocrity and dumbing
down, that some artists maintain their
integrity. Bonney has been courageous
enough to give us works that have little
chance of being judged as masterpieces
but nevertheless are of interest and
are far from negligible.
John Phillips
Barbara Bonney (soprano) 
