KLEMPERER conducts Mozart, Vol. 2 (1956-60) - PASC606

“This is a magnificent record, if only because it carries what is for me easily the most satisfying recorded performance of the big G minor, K.550. Klemperer takes the first movement at a fairly leisurely molto allegro, but how beautiful and moving the opening is—as with his Eroica, you know from the first bars that this is going to be a performance that won’t ever disappoint, and so it turns out to be. He does the first movement repeat (which I regard as essential) and continues to a slow movement which is full of grave tenderness and of a sympathy with sadness. Then comes a wonderfully exhilarating Minuet, just what is wanted after the slow movement’s mood, and a fine finale. I wouldn’t want a bar altered anywhere. The Philharmonia give Klemperer the most lovely playing, especially in the quiet string tone, and the recording is admirable.

The same quality is also to be found in the “little” G minor, though here I have to make one big reservation. I simply cannot believe that the slow movement should go as fast as this. It seems to me a complete misjudgment. And if you think that impertinent of me, then I produce the witnesses for the prosecution, who are, in greater or less degree, all the other conductors listed above, Walter, indeed, turns the movement into an adagio, and surely goes too far: Solti hits it off exactly (and I prefer his version to all others, for the whole thing is well-judged and the L.S.O. is in excellent form).

But there is historical reason for my view as well as support from other conductors. The movement is marked andante, 2/4. Now in later times than Mozart’s that would mean that the crotchet beat is to go along at an andante. But in Mozart’s day, when there weren’t conductors to beat time, composers referred to the pulse of the music, not to the unit of the time-signature, and the pulse of this movement is the quaver, not the crotchet. And you can convince yourself of this by your own ears if you listen to Klemperer and ask yourself whether it doesn’t sound like an allegretto as he does it, not an andante.

No: I can’t accept this speed. But I accept everything else on this disc with such delight that the record goes into my library and certainly won’t get dusty on the shelves. And what a wonderfully satisfying K.550!”

T.H., The Gramophone, September 1957
Review of Mozart Symphonies 25 and 40

The three recordings which make up this second volume of Klemperer's Mozart were all recorded together between 21 and 25 July 1956, allowed for a particularly well-balanced sound across the entire album, and one which has been greately enhanced by this stereo XR remastering.

Andrew Rose