Originally posted by jayne lee wilson
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Wonderfully detailed (and instructive) listening, fhg, thankyou! Even if I would allow performers a little more licentiousness..
(If we were both conductors, I'm sure we'd infuriate each other...
then sneakily admire...).
(If we were both conductors, I'm sure we'd infuriate each other...
then sneakily admire...).Sondergard and BBC NOW played "all the right notes in the right order" in the Eric Morecambe sense, but what was missing, especially in the andante, was the kind of subtle rubato, phrasing and singing lines that Mozart himself was famous for as an executant. The relative infrequency of expression marks in the score emphatically doesn't mean that the music should be played without expression, which too much of it was here, though admittedly not to the grotesque Norringtonian extreme.
On second hearing I still found the opening allegro molto lacking in urgency & agitation, while the andante struck me as tediously metronomic. Here JLW, I'm not asking for quasi-operatic melodramatics as you seem to imply, but a degree of subtle flexibility & expressivity in tempo & phrasing, shifts of mood & colour which
were absent to my ears.
I'm in agreement with FHG that the allegro assai finale was just too slow. Inexplicably, it became slower for the expo repeat, & then speeded up in what is often wittily referred to as the "dodecaphonic passage" at start of the development. For this passage to make sense the tempo should be rigidly maintained - & there's nothing in the score to indicate otherwise. Succeeding woodwind exchanges lacked the proper sense of shock & awe at Mozart's violent ripping apart of the tonality.
Like FHG I regard the VPO as a stylistic & expressive touchstone in this music, having first heard them give nos 39, 40, & 41 under Karl Bohm at the RFH in the 70s. 40 years ago it would have been odorous to compare a BBC NOW performance to one given by KB & the illustrious Austrians, but in the intervening years the gap has shrunk, & the fact that we can now do so attests to the incredibly high standard of modern orchestras everywhere, esp. the excellent BBC NOW. I loved the Bartok & Barber, by the way.
(and, if I may take a diabolical liberty - 
)
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