Gentle Mozart from Karajan--one of his best
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 02/25/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"As huge as his discography is, Karajan has quite a few out-of-print recordings. This pairing of the Mozart Sym. 40 and 41 dates from 1960 and 1963 respectively. It was a period when Karajan made some of his most engaging recordings with the Vienna Phil. (including his best Also Sprach Zarathustra), and Decca provided warm analog sound showing no hint of digital glare in the transfer.
Weekend classics was one of Decca's super-budget lines, yet these are outstanding performances, full of golden tone and completely devoid of slickness or impersonality on Karajan's part. You can get the same pairing on EMI and DG with the Berlin Phil., and the performance remains essentially the same--large-scaled, relaxed in tempo, shaped with unobtrusive rubato--but this version has that special Viennese touch."