BaL 14.04.12 Mozart Symphony no 41 "Jupiter"

[Nick Armstrong]

... and these Boards are largely responsible*


* Yes that includes you, Caliberama - Mozart Krips indeed...

Yes (and CD Review of a Saturday) and.... yes! Have you taken the plunge re Krips/Mozart then, vinfortifié?

[vinteuil]

Have you taken the plunge re Krips/Mozart then, vinfortifié?

... yep.

[Nick Armstrong]

... yep.

...and yet: I feel the weight of the responsibility

Although amazon are very good about returns within (I think) 21 days, in case you find Caliban to have cloth ears!

Do please give a detailed account once it arrives.

[jayne lee wilson]

There's an excellent No.35 with Krips/RPO on Chesky, c/w an equally fine Haydn 104, and the Jupiter (relatively repeat-lite) with Rene Leibowitz. These date from 1962 - Wilkinson, Walthamstow etc...transferred sound as per usual Chesky standards.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

But the £19.99 price at amazon.co.uk applies to both the 6CD boxed set and the mp3 download option. Of course, the Japanese CDs may be of better transfers.

Ah, so it does, but the CD version is incorrectly labelled by Amazon as Symphonies 31-41.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The lack of a surviving Furtwangler performance is regrettable in view of his fine performances of 39 & 40, the letter being the catalyst that pushed me in to classical music at the age of 10. A few months later, I heard a Krips recording of no. 40, with the slowest 1st movement ever recorded (?) as opposed to the 1948/49 Furtwangler, which may well be the quickest.

[Andrew Preview]

I have only three recordings - Pinnock, Menuhin and Mackerras (SCO). I enjoy all of them, but unlike others I have reservations about the Mackerras. It is thrilling, but I find the brass just too brash at times. Menuhin is stylish, but too muted next to Mackerras. Pinnock seems to me to strike a fine balance.

[reinerfan]

My god! I have just counted and I find that i have 35 versions, most of which have crept up on me as couplings. My all-time favourite is Bruno Walter with the New York P.O. and Mackerras with the Prague C.O. for a more modern recording (I prefer the sound of this orchestra to his version with the Scottish C.O.). René Jacobs with the Freiberg Baroque Orchestra provide my favourite "authentic" version. Two other versions which give me a great deal of pleasure are Peter Maag with the Orchestra of Padova e del Veneto, and Jane Glover with the Royal P.O.

[BBMmk2]

At least I have a jamming session this morning! :)

[cloughie]

There's an excellent No.35 with Krips/RPO on Chesky, c/w an equally fine Haydn 104, and the Jupiter (relatively repeat-lite) with Rene Leibowitz. These date from 1962 - Wilkinson, Walthamstow etc...transferred sound as per usual Chesky standards.

These will be the same recordings I bought as part of a Reader's Digest box for a couple of quid in a charity shop.

[euthynicus]

Trying to resist hearing what we want to hear is a good discipline, but the thin and vinegary sound of Hogwood's orchestra ruled it out for me straightaway. And I hear mischief in this Norrington recording, right from the crescendo on the reiteration of the opening gesture: pure iconoclasm, applied from without. It's good to hear but it would drive me mad more than once or twice. Still, a splendid BaL, I thought, whose only real omission was a failure to address the pathos of ii. It left me confirmed in my enthusiasm for Abbado's Orchestra Mozart set (I note MC didn't even mention his earlier recording - of conductors, perhaps only Klemperer has evolved his interpretative stances so radically during the course of his career?), which I think is a marvel of our age. I expect MC would have thought little of the Orchestre de Paris and Barenboim, on EMI, never reissued, which was the very first LP I owned. But he does take all the repeats. And while I applaud a defence or promotion of Boult, I found the old problem, which is that the playing's often not good enough to convey what Boult wants to do.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This was one of those BaLs that oozed self-satisfied smugness about what was "right".
Plus loaded adjectives such as "old-style" used in a derogatory way.
However, there were some apt points made as well, and it was a much better programme than the Roy Goodman review of Beethoven's Violin Concerto.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A "useful" BaL, rather than a "good" one, I thought: I'm getting the Immerseel come payday!

[amateur51]

Given the welter of versions to get through, I thought that this BaL was very good. Martin Cotton told me plenty about the symphony as we went along and illustrated aspects by reference to different performances. I tried to listen to it as I used to when I a teenager and I must say that I would have been enthused about the piece and Mozart and Radio 3 as a result

Well done Radio 3

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A "useful" BaL, rather than a "good" one, I thought

Translation: "Wasn't he snooty about Bernstein?! "

I'm also going to seek out Albert Coates: even if the Orchestra couldn't cope, that's the speed I've always thought the first group of the First Movement should be taken, with the Violins imitating Snare Drum flams. The blazes with Jupiter: this is Mars!