W.A. Mozart - Le Nozze di Figaro - René Jacobs & Concerto Köln - 3 CDs

A ‘neo-Classical’ approach.

‘This is the only suitable adjective to define what we are looking for, with our period instruments, our fast tempos, the performance of the recitatives, the ornaments added here and there by the singers, and a few other features that may surprise the audience: an approach that is not ‘Baroque’ – the term would be wholly out of place here – but ‘neo-Classical’, as opposed to the ‘post-Romantic’ one which began to determine our listening habits in the first half of the twentieth century. Every period has its own Mozart tradition; the neo-Classical approach is the fruit of an increasingly intense desire, not to ‘reconstruct’ musical performance practices of Mozart’s time, but to utilise them with the imagination proper to the individual personality of each musician, as important elements that are nevertheless subordinate to an overall vision.’

René Jacobs