All the items on this reissue have appeared separately as Beulah
Extra releases but unless you have already obtained some of them,
together they make an attractive programme.
Muir Mathieson appears first with the Sinfonia of London, the
ad
hoc orchestra which he founded in 1955, consisting of players
from the London orchestras, chiefly for film music but also much employed
by World Record Club, itself an offshoot of EMI. This stylish recording
of the
Così fan tutte Overture first appeared on LP with
Eine
Kleine Nachtmusik and Schubert’s Fifth Symphony. It has already
been released on Beulah Extra 3BX93, the
Nachtmusik on 2BX93
and the Schubert on 1BX93 – all reviewed in
November
2010 along with several other Mozart releases on Beulah Extra.
Beulah have made something of a speciality of
Come scoglio, with
recordings featuring Suzanne Danco (
2BX177),
Teresa Stich-Randall (
1BX167)
and this one with Helen Lawrence, already released on Beulah Extra 8BX55.
Reviewing Lawrence in a number of arias on various Beulah Extra recordings
in
October
2010 I thought the Mozart the pick of a fine bunch, with excellent
support from orchestra and conductor and more recent sound than on other
Beulah reissues (
review).
Géza Anda was one of the first to record Mozart piano concertos in the
dual role of soloist and conductor. Though not universally well received
on their appearance, his recordings still sound stylish over 50 years
on. What then seemed lacking in charm is more in tune with the modern
view of Mozart as anything other than a figurine on a pedestal. If
you want that older view of Mozart at its best,
Beulah Extra have Annie Fischer and Sir Adrian Boult in Piano Concerto
No.20, K466 (
1-3BX130),
and No.23, K488 (
5-8BX130).
The Linn Studio Master reissue of the Anda recording is no longer
on offer as it was when I reviewed No.6 and No.22 on 7-9BX88 and 4-6BX88
respectively in
DL
News 2013/9 but the Beulah transfer will do very nicely.
If you enjoy Anda’s Mozart as much as I expect, you can complement it
by downloading his famous version of Piano Concerto No.21 – the recording
used for the film
Elvira Madigan – on DG Works 4790987 for just
£2.49 or £3.06 (mp3 and lossless respectively, with pdf booklet) from
prestoclassical.co.uk.
Several of Anda’s recordings of some of the other mature Mozart concertos
may be found on Australian DG Eloquence.
We end as we began with the Sinfonia of London, this time conducted
by the young Colin Davis. It was World Record Club who gave him his
first leg up the ladder of fame, with recordings of Mozart Symphonies
Nos. 29 and 39 (ST43) and No.34 with Leon Goossens in the Oboe Concerto
(T59). Soon afterwards EMI began to take him seriously with a wonderful
recording of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony on HMV Concert Classics:
Beulah 15-16BX129 –
Download
Roundup February 2012/1.
We’ve already had those four Mozart recordings on Beulah 3PD44: excellent
value with over 92 minutes of music on a single album from
Amazon
UK. I reviewed that in
DL
News 2013/7 and, though the tempi are consistently somewhat sedate,
I still enjoy the performances, all well transferred by Beulah. You
can also obtain the Colin Davis recording of Symphony No.29 separately
on Beulah Extra
1-4BX129
–
DL
News 2013/5.
As with some other recent Beulah releases which gather together
in album format reissues which were already available as separate
tracks from Beulah Extra, there’s something of a duplication problem
for those who purchased them in that form, perhaps after having read
my review. That’s my only serious reservation about
The Joy of
Mozart and you can always avoid the problem by going for those
other Beulah recordings. Otherwise together they make an attractive
package. The performances are all still well worth hearing and all
the transfers have been made with Beulah’s usual care and skill.
All that remains is for them to start releasing their recordings in
lossless sound – they are made in wav format and reach me in that
quality, so I have to convert them to 256kb/s mp3 to hear how they
will sound from Amazon and iTunes and they inevitably lose a little
quality in the process. It’s not for me to tell anyone how to run
their business but High Definition Tape Transfers have proved that
there is a market for lossless, 24-bit and even DSD transfers of older
recordings.
There was always more in the grooves than we thought, even with the
most expensive equipment that I could afford at the time – I would have
played the Anda Mozart from the university record library on a Garrard
AT6 turntable with a C1 ceramic cartridge. As I progressed, eventually
to a Shure M97EJ cartridge, unfortunately the snap, crackle and pop
increased too, despite my best efforts with a Parastat and Dust Bug.
I’m not nostalgic for the days of LP, but Beulah give us the best of
all worlds, getting all the music out of the grooves without the unwanted
noise.
Brian Wilson
