Gratuitous Musickal Posting (TM)

The local radio station is currently running a recording of Leopold Mozart's "Hunting" Symphony in G Major (his "Jagdsinfonie"), performed by Donald Armstrong and the New Zealand Chamber Orchestra. (The piece is really more of a concerto for four hunting horns than a symphony.)

I used to have a recording of this piece by Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields that superimposed the sounds of shotguns and dogs in the first movement, as called for in Leopold's score. Armstrong and the boys are doing the same thing here, only it sounds more like cannon-fire.

Speaking of dogs, this is one dog of a piece of musick, and why anybody plays it is a sweet mystery to me. Every time I hear it, I become more firmly convinced that young Wolfgang was taking a dig at the Old Man as much as anybody else with his Ein Musikalischer Spaß ("A Musical Joke").

UPDATE: Now they're playing Georg Philipp Telemann's Concerto in A Major "The Frogs", performed by Philip Pickett and the New London Consort. The violins produce a wonderful effect, like the croaking that fills the woods behind our house after it rains.

I must say again that of all the composers I listen to, Telemann has probably benefited most from the period performance movement. I never liked Telemann as a kid, based on the records Dad had dating from the 50's and 60's. His music seemed slow, sloppy and lugubrious. But under the hands of groups like this one, as well as others like Musica Antiqua Cologne, it really comes alive, singing and dancing.