For Mozart’s 262nd birthday on Saturday “Trove Thursday” celebrates with a crazy-quilt of his finest concert arias in live performances from over 60 years sung by (in alphabetical order) Anna Caterina Antonacci, Montserrat Caballé, Gianna d’Angelo, Sabine Devieilhe, Elina Garanca, Reri Grist, Barbara Hendricks, Edda Moser, Jessye Norman, Alex Penda, Sandrine Piau, Graziella Sciutti, Beverly Sills, Joan Sutherland, Lydia Teuscher and Julia Varady.

I crushed very early on Mozart operas so I then discovered in eighth grade or so the concert arias first via Moser’s astonishing recordings of K. 316 & 368. In high school armed with my trusty Craig 3” portable reel-to-reel I recorded Norman’s K.505 & 528 and listened to them over and over, particularly K.505. Mozart was especially inspired by the soprano voice and the piano so what could be better than this masterpiece which intertwines them so eloquently?

My Norman recordings had long since vanished when I found copies about ten years ago. But when I started to gather this miscellany I couldn’t find them! But both turned up by accident one day burned on a CD as filler for a Zelenka cantata!

This survey reveals as many approaches as fifteen very different sopranos (and one mezzo) can provide. Some may work better than others but I hope this hodgepodge might be stimulating especially for those who don’t yet know these jewels well. One particular rarity is the jaw-dropping Sutherland K. 419 about which I have almost no information though it comes from pre-Lucia day, possibly from a BBC broadcast.

Commercial recordings of these pieces turn up with some regularity but in my experience one doesn’t get to hear them all that often live although Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart does its bit. I heard Cecilia Bartoli in one of her first NYC appearances in 1990 when she sang K. 505 but the only other time I’ve heard that piece in performance was when Magdalena Kozena sang it with Yefim Bronfman at the piano also at MM.

I managed to catch Thomas Quasthoff doing the bass concert arias at Mostly Mozart where a couple years ago Erin Morley dazzled in “Vorrei spiegarvi” and “No, che non sei capace.” About fifteen years ago also at MM the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her company Rosas presented Un moto di gioia, an appealing evening-length dance piece set entirely to a selection of concert arias usually written for insertion into operas by other composers.

“Un moto di gioia” is however a piece that Mozart wrote for a soprano singing Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro to replace “Venite, inginocchiatevi.” It might be remembered that Bartoli’s decision to sing both of Mozart’s replacement Susanna arias (including the marvelous “Al desio”) at the Met in 1998 caused Jonathan Miller to have a conniption ft.

Sixteen of these delicacies in a row might be too rich for some so I’ve divided the arias into 3 groups of five or six arranged in order by Köchel number.

Group I

K. 217: “Voi avete un cor fedele”

Graziella Sciutti

Camerata Academia

Bernhard Paumgartner

Salzburg Festival

18 August 1963

K. 272: “Ah, lo previdi!”

Anna Caterina Antonacci

Orchestra da Camera del Gran Teatre del Liceu

Josep Pons

Barcelona

28 November 2005

K. 316: Popoli di Tessaglia!”

Sabine Devieilhe

Les Siècles

François-Xavier Roth

Cité de la Musique, Paris

2 December 2014

K. 369: “Misera, dove son!”

Sandrine Piau

Orchestre des Champs-Elysees

Philippe Herreweghe

Ghent

4 October 1995

K. 383: “Nehmt meinen Dank”

Montserrat Caballé.

New York Philharmonic

Thomas Dunn

Philharmonic Hall

17 April 1966

Group II

K. 416: “Mia speranza adorata!”

Gianna D’Angelo

The Esterhazy Orchestra

David Blum

Town Hall

30 January 1963

K. 418: “Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!”

Reri Grist

Camerata Academia

Bernhard Paumgartner

Salzburg Festival

15 August 1965

K. 419 : “No, che non sei capace”

Joan Sutherland

BBC?

1957?

K. 486a: “Basta, vincesti”

Barbara Hendricks

Mozarteum-Orchester

Ralf Weikert

Salzburg Festival

9 August 1981

K.505: “Ch’io mi scordi di te?”

Jessye Norman

Robert Levin (piano)

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Colin Davis

1974?

Group III

K. 528: “Bella mia fiamma”

Julia Varady

Mozarteum-Orchester

Gerhard Wimberger

Salzburg Festival

28 August 1977

K. 538: “Ah se in ciel, benigne stelle”

Beverly Sills

Boston Symphony

Erich Leinsdorf

Tanglewood Festival

6 July 1968

K. 57y: “Al desio, di chi t’adora”

Lydia Teuscher

San Francisco Symphony Orchestra

Paul Goodwin

Davies Symphony Hall

29 January 2015

K. 578: “Alma grande”

Elina Garanca

Münchner Rundfunkorchester

Harry Bicket

Augsburg

27 January 2006

K. 580: “Schon lacht der holde Frühling”

Edda Moser

NDR Symphonieorchester

Emmanuel Krivine

1974?

K. 583: “Vado, ma dove?”

Alex Penda

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin

Václav Luks

Mozartfest Augsburg

12 July 2015

Each of the three concert aria programs can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a square with an arrow pointing downward on its audio player and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

All “Trove Thursday” podcasts since the series began in September 2015 remain available from iTunes for free, or via any RSS reader.