Mozart: Symphonies 39 & 41 - Gardiner, English Baroque Soloists (2011)

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Mozart: Symphonies 39 & 41 - Gardiner, English Baroque Soloists (2011)

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This album made the headlines in 2006 as the UK’s first classical “on the night” recording. CDs were made during the second part of the concert for the audience to take home after the concert. This is the first time this CD is commercially released. Symphonies 39 & 49 are among the last composed by Mozart. They use the full eighteenth-century orchestra, complete with trumpets and timpani.

Symphony 39 (K543) shows Mozart at his most exalted in the orchestral passages, while some passages remain intimate and touching, with more delicate themes. The Minuet features the orchestra’s guest artists, the clarinets, in a waltz-like Trio.

The “Jupiter”, Mozart’s final symphony (no 41, K551), belongs to a sequence of grand ceremonial works in C major.

Typically for Mozart it juxtaposes a number of different contrasting musical characters and ideas, from the formal and aristocratic to the heartfelt and soulful.

In the finale, the composer’s compositional virtuosity is on display. Through the whole runs an extraordinary spirit, a mixture of intellectual excitement, the feeling of a grand design, and a sense of fun.

Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Conductor: John Eliot Gardiner
Orchestra/Ensemble: English Baroque Soloists

Reviews: The playing of these brightly paced, joyous performances of familiar Mozart symphonies is remarkable enough. The story behind the disc I am listening to provides additional fascination. This is a live recording of a concert on February 9, 2006, in London’s Cadogan Hall. The producer and John Eliot Gardiner decided to borrow a sales technique from rock bands, which somehow contrive to make compact discs so quickly that they sell the recordings of the just-completed concert to the exited crowd. The Mozart concert opened with the two symphonies found here. While on stage the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists were collaborating on the C-Minor Mass, the relevant people were manufacturing the discs that held the live performances of the symphonies. There were glitches, and some customers had to wait. And during the performances there were evidently a few minor mistakes and major coughs, all of which have been removed in the disc I am now listening to.


None of that would matter if the performances were not as striking as they turn out to be. These are period-instrument recordings with a small orchestra. That matters from the opening drum taps, which in another favorite recording, that of Colin Davis, are submerged in the orchestra. Here they stand out distinctly. The performance doesn’t seem small in any way. In fact, I admire Gardiner who, knowing that the band was being recorded, still opted for the invigorating tempos we hear throughout and especially in the finales. His strings are precise, the orchestra is balanced, and there are subtle effects, changes in dynamics and texture, throughout. The music seems to swing at times, and favorite passages, like the clarinet solos in Symphony No. 39, couldn’t be lovelier. This is a thoroughly appealing disc.