Your Favourite Sir Colin Davis Recording

[Andrew Preview]

I taped him doing it this way in 2/96 with the LSO on R3 live at the Barbican.

I went to that concert! It was one of many enjoyable evenings with the LSO and Colin Davis from that period. Another that sticks in the memory was a performance of Beethoven's fourth piano concerto with Stephen Kovacevich. I recall Sir Colin dropping his baton in the opening tutti - Kovacevich caught it and calmly passed it back! It was a terrific performance - the second movement utterly spellbinding.

[Barbirollians]

The Kovacevich/Davis set of the Beethoven concertos remains one of my favourite sets - with Barenboim/Klemperer and the Solomon recordings.

Davis of course also accompanied Arrau in his marvellous late Beethoven 4 and 5 and Perahia in a less well renowned buy equally splendid coupling of the Grieg/Schumann.

Then there was of course that superb VPO Romeo and Juliet and the Menuhin Harold and that Beethoven 7 and the London symphonies and his Cgebouw coupling of Dvorak 7 and 8 and and and ....

[Petrushka]

Another occasion when Sir Colin's baton went flying from his grasp was at a March 1977 performance of Walton's 1st Symphony with the BBCSO. I had this on tape at one time and it was a blistering account that deserves a CD issue. Perhaps ICA Classics could oblige?

[Dave2002]

Yes. The Haydn 86 was coupled with No 98 on LP - it's before me as I write - but as far as I know it has never been transferred to CD, possibly because there was no available coupling for a CD issue. It's the best performance of it I've heard. All of his Haydn synphonies recordings would make a delightful box.

There are other recordings which I can't locate on CD. I was sure that I really enjoyed CD's Mozart symphony 25 a long while ago, but almost all traces of that seem to have vanished, so I've been beginning to doubt my own memory. Here is evidence however that he did record it -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mozart-Symphonies-London-Symphony-Colin/dp/B004AWVPNK

Trying to find just one or two favourites out of so many seems almost impossible. His Mozart piano concertos with Stephen Bishop/Kovacevich are excellent, thoguh he also recorded a few with Ingrid Haebler earlier, as well as some (all?) of Mozart's wind concertos.

Is there significant evidence that his style changed over the years? I don't know - haven't had time to make comparisons, but he made a complete Beethoven cycle around a decade ago. I wonder how it compares with his much earlier Beethoven recordings?

He recorded Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique several times, and I think they're all good, perhaps for slightly different reasons.

I do wish that Mozart symphony 25 could reappear.

[visualnickmos]

.....I do wish that Mozart symphony 25 could reappear.

Yes - so do I. As a slight aside, Bernstein's recording with the VPO is rather good.

[cloughie]

The original WRC issue of this was my first Colin Davis LP way back in the early 60s.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wagner-Siegf...ds=colin+davis

I always find it interesting looking back at a Conductor's recorded repertoire to look what's there but also what's not there - the Tchaikovsky Ballet Music from his operas is one of his few Tchaikovsky recordings, to my knowledge he only did the odd Bruckner and Mahler Symphony - not cycles and yet he majored on Berlioz and Sibelius - also interestingly coming to Nielsen very late in his career. Also not much Debussy or Ravel and his English music by no means comprehensive.

[aeolium]

There are other recordings which I can't locate on CD. I was sure that I really enjoyed CD's Mozart symphony 25 a long while ago, but almost all traces of that seem to have vanished, so I've been beginning to doubt my own memory. Here is evidence however that he did record it -
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mozart-Symph.../dp/B004AWVPNK

The other evidence that he did record it is that I have the LP, Dave2002 This was the one I referred to as a favourite for personal reasons in my post a few pages back (msg 24). The "little G minor" no 25 was a fiery performance, but the others on the record, the lovely A major and the short G-major, are also very well done. I'm not sure if it ever got transferred to CD.

[Barbirollians]

There was also an excellent Mozart No 28 in Dresden .

[Ferretfancy]

Yes - so do I. As a slight aside, Bernstein's recording with the VPO is rather good.

Yes, No.25 a very nice performance in an interesting set. Curiously, No. 29 is rather sedate, and he is rather lazy in No.39, but it's well worth having.

[verismissimo]

Has Colin Davis's Sadler's Wells Carmen highlights from 1962 been mentioned?

I saw him conduct it with them at the Coventry Theatre a year or so earlier. My first opera. Lit a flame for life.

Patricia Johnson as Carmen. The wonderful Australian tenor Donald Smith as Don Jose.

Spinning it on an ancient HMV LP now.

[Petrushka]

This might be of interest: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sir-Colin-Da...ds=colin+davis

Might be a fair bit of duplication and the price needs to come down a bit. Other than that, it's on my wish list.

[Suffolkcoastal]

My favourite recordings of his are the Tippett Symphonies and Triple Concerto and the Concertgebouw recording on Phillips of The Firebird, for me the best recording ever made of the work. I never took to his Sibelius at all, mind you nor have I to most other performances with a British conductors, with the odd exception, I'm not sure why, but it just doesn't happen for me.

[makropulos]

A few things come instantly to mind:
Tippett: Symphony 2 originally on Argo; Triple Concert on Philips; Rose Lake on RCA - all wonderful records that have already been mentioned several times (unsurprisingly).

Elgar: I marginally prefer the LSO Live performance of No. 1 to the Dresden one, but they're both terrific, and I love the LSO 2nd Symph. I've an off-air recording of "Gerontius" from Boston with Jessye Norman as the Angel - it's a marvellous peformance from her, the Boston SO and Davis. Stewart Burrows is a bit wayward, but I can forgive that.

Vaughan Williams Symph 4 with the Boston SO live in 1973, in the big Boston SO box set of live performances.

Peter Grimes on Philips (Vickers/Harper/Summers/ROH). Tremendous and it feels extremely theatrical to me (I greatly prefer it to the LSO Live remake).

I'm probably alone in never quite getting Sir Colin's Mozart or Beethoven. But I love the Brahms D minor with Kovacevich (Philips, now on Newton Classics), and their Bartók concertos.

[Stunsworth]

I listened to the latest Berlioz requiem earlier today streamed from Qobuz.

http://www.qobuz.com/album/london-philharmonic-choir-berlioz-grande-messe-des-morts/0822231172925

I greatly enjoyed it - and the engineers have done a good job with what must have been a pig of an acoustic.

[secondfiddle]

One doesn't, perhaps, think of Colin Davis as a conductor of Mahler but when he was with the BBC he gave two or three performances of Mahler 8 at the Proms, I think, and his Bavarian performance on RCA (taken from two live concerts in 1996) has an absolutely magnificent conclusion, superbly controlled and captured in an outstanding recording. It shows what an excellent control he had of large forces.