CD Review: Mozart: German Dances

I've collected a fair number of albums over the years in the optimistic hope that art recordings might somehow be usable for dancing.  Often, that doesn't work out terribly well.  But after teaching a Regency waltz class last weekend and deciding that I absolutely had to have new waltz pieces for this era, I dug up one of my really old CDs, Mozart: German Dances by Capella Istropolitana under the conducting of Johannes Wildner.  This is a 1990 CD from Naxos that features no fewer than twenty-five Mozart "danses allemandes" dated from 1789 and 1791, all between one and four minutes long.  I can't say whether they were specifically intended for waltzes rather than for ländlers or other 3/4 time dances, but they certainly make dandy waltzes.

All of them, needless to say, are lovely (duh; Mozart!), and played exquisitely.  Dancing or not, if you just want to sit around listening to lightweight Mozart for an hour, this album will do just fine.

Dancewise, there are some problems with many of the tracks: pauses, odd accents, and extreme tempo changes make some of the pieces a challenge and others virtually unusable for social dancing or teaching, though they might make nifty performance pieces for choreographed dances. 

Here are my quick notes on the various tracks:

These six are all in the 120-130 beats per minute range and have no disruptive oddities:
K.586 Nos. 1, 4, 7
K.600 Nos. 2, 3
K.602 No. 4

These three are faster (140-156 bpm) but also have no oddities:
K.586 No. 6
K.600 No. 6
K.605 No. 2

These eight have tempi ranging from 119 to 141 and have minor oddities -- accent issues, pauses, minor tempo changes -- but are still usable:
K.586 No. 2
K.600 Nos. 1, 4, 5
K.602 Nos. 1, 2, 3
K.605 No. 1

The last eight have radical and abrupt tempo changes:
K.586 Nos. 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
K.605 No. 3

By "radical" I mean differences in tempo of between twenty and sixty beats a minute over a range of 120 to 180 bpm.  And the jumps in tempo are instant, not gradual.  I wouldn't surprise social dancers or students with that kind of dramatic change.

Considering that with many classical recordings I get only one or two usable pieces, getting nine that are completely danceable and eight more with only minor issues is something of a miracle.  I heartily recommend this album to anyone looking for waltz music with the right feel for the late 18th or early 19th century.

A note: modern choreographer John Hertz used two of these compositions for his creations in the late 1970s or early 1980s: K.605 No. 1 for "Horatio's Fancy" and K.600 No. 2 for "An Easy Competence".  Sadly, period music does not compensate for ahistorical choreography.

Mozart: German Dances is available as a CD or MP3 download from Amazon at the link below or (from different vendors in a variety of countries) from the Naxos website.