Colin Davis’ LSO Mozart Requiem

Jeremy Lee writes

Colin Davis was, of course, no mean Mozartian.  Apart from his universally acclaimed series of the operas, he was an intelligent accompanist to the concerti (Grumiaux and Larrocha to name two), and produced a glorious set of late symphonies with the Staatskapelle Dresden on Philips.  Of the Requiem, he recorded

Featured Musician: A Maazel Celebration

The discs under consideration here.

Jeremy Lee writes

A Box Of Karl Böhm’s Late Recordings

Jeremy Lee writes

The circumstances for the reissue of these “late recordings” in a box set is rather curious.  Usually when a box set documenting the artistry of a legendary artist (in whole or in part) surfaces, its release date coincides with the anniversary year of that artist’s birth or death or other meaningful anniversaries.  Released in 2015, the present set seems

Uchida’s Cleveland Mozart 18, 19

Leonard Ip writes [translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Lee]

Reviewers for art forms (be it music, movies or books) are often glad to come across certain types of efforts, and there are two types of this kind of efforts: outstanding efforts, and terrible efforts—things that don’t require lots of thinking to form a value judgment. But of course, extreme examples of both types of efforts are rare, which is why

Klemperer Legacy box sets keep coming!

Remember the previous news about the Klemperer Legacy series of box sets?  We have been informed that EMI will be releasing Klemperer’s complete recordings on the Klemperer Legacy series, which is a GOOD THING, and which means that his Mahler and Wagner and so on will certainly be reissued in due course.  Meanwhile EMI will release three new box sets under the Klemperer Legacy name in January.

Barenboim’s Mozart Concertos

     

Leonard Ip writes

Barenboim’s Mozart piano concertos with the English Chamber Orchestra (he later recorded some of them with the Berlin Phil.) are now on EMI Masters and National Gallery (the coupling of the latter taken from Classics for Pleasure). Mozart’s piano concertos are in essence more of entertainment that the solo works, and they

Karajan’s Mozart Mud

Jeremy Lee writes

Oh dear.  While Karajan’s efforts are very widely admired throughout the world, his somber and strict approach to many pieces may not suit all tastes, and this is exactly one of those.  This 1961 recording of Mozart’s Requiem with the Vienna Singverein and the Berlin Philharmonic