MOZART: Symphonies Nos. 40 and 31 (NTSC)

From the Rokokotheater Schloss Schwetzingen /
From the Mozarteum Salzburg* 1991

Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Stuttgart, Gianluigi Gelmetti /
Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, Jeffrey Tate*

Directed by Jànos Darvas

Sound Format: PCM Stereo
Picture Format: 4:3
Region Code: 0 worldwide
Menu Languages: D, F, GB, SP
Running Time: 56 mins
DVD 5/ NTSC

Cat no.: 100 073

The interval between these two great works spanned ten years, yet Mozart's D major ("Paris") and G minor symphonies were both conceived in trying times for the composer.

Mozart wrote his Symphony No. 31 while in Paris looking for a music position. Once celebrated as a wunderkind by the French aristocracy, he scored only minor successes during this stay, with little financial gain. Thoroughly disenchanted with the French and their music Mozart left France saying of the symphony, "I can answer for its pleasing the few intelligent French people who may be there - and as for the stupid ones, I shall not consider it a great misfortune if they are not pleased. I still hope, however, that even asses will find something in it to admire."

The "Great" Symphony in G minor was composed in 1788 during Mozart's residency in Vienna, where Don Giovanni had recently flopped after a successful run in Prague. Indeed this symphony and his other two of this period remained unpublished until after the composer's death, ironic given its popularity today. It has a brooding, darker feel and gives an outlet to Mozart's frustration at his financial worries and grief at the recent death of his six-month-old daughter.

In these 1991 recordings the celebrated RSO Stuttgart under Gianluigi Gelmetti and the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg under Mozart specialist Jeffrey Tate present very different but equally fresh readings of these two middle-period works.

"... what matters is Tate's flair, his unforced ability to treat passages or whole movements not in a safe way, apt for any Mozart symphony, but with special concern for a particular and individual argument ... the sense of live communication is exhilarating." Gramophone