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Mstation Classical Reviews


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Sun, 29 Jan 2006

Mozart, symphonies 40, 41

W.A. Mozart, Symphony No. 40 in G minor,
Symphony No. 41 in C major "Jupiter"
Divertimento in D major
Wiener Philharmoniker
Riccardo Muti
from the Saltzburg Festival of 1991
DVD, Philips 

There will be a lot of Mozart around in 2006. It is the 250th anniversary of his birth and everyone from record labels to radio stations are doing something -- and why not? Mozart is one of the great figures of the Western Classical tradition ... all of which makes me wonder if there are people who listen only to Mozart. His output was prodigious and you could actually go for quite some time without repeating a piece ... and once you start taking different versions into account you would need more than the alloted human span to cover them.

The pieces on this DVD were recorded for television, in stereo, during the Saltzburg Festival of 1991. There is also Surround Sound available on this disc through the application of Emil Berliner Studio's Ambient Sound Imaging.

They are nice peformances too, and recent enough that the original bandwidth of the recordings didn't need to be gussied up for normal stereo. If you like to look at the orchestra at home as well as hear it, this DVD will do the trick. There is also a Mozart chronology and picture gallery. (Mr Phelps)

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