Tintner Memorial Edition Vol. 1 - Mozart Symphonies Nos. 31, 35 & 40

From 1995 to 1998 Tintner made his internationally acclaimed recordings of all the Bruckner Symphonies for Naxos with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. These are my favorite recordings of the Bruckner symphonies.

I rather liked these recordings of Mozart Symphonies but before I wrote this review I played a number of fine recordings of each work. Symphony No. 31, the Paris Symphony, is given as good a performance as I have, whether by Jane Glover, Hogwood or Pinnock. However, let's concentrate on the greater works, No. 35, the Haffner Symphony, and No. 40. For the Haffner, my favorite has long been the Krips recording reissued on Chesky, along with another he did for London with the Israel Philharmonic (not the Philips recordings). But I also listened to performances with Marriner, Colin Davis, Karl Böhm (Vienna Philharmonic), Antonia Brico, Pablo Casals, and historically informed performances with Hogwood and Pinnock. For No. 40, my favorite recording has been one by Nicholas Cleobury and the London Symphony on a Castle CD. I listened to performances with Marriner, Casals, Klemperer, and of course, Hogwood and Pinnock.

After this, did I turn away from the Tintner recordings with disgust, as previous reviewers would suggest? Well, in a word, No! Tintner and Symphony Nova Scotia held my interest throughout and I quite enjoyed the performances. They are lively and alert performances, rhythmically strong with beats are accented as they are supposed to be in Mozart, not smoothed over as is appropriate in the later Romantic music. Each phrase is given its proper shape and even individual notes are dynamically shaded. As well, as we would expect with a conductor of his calibre, Tintner has a conception of each movement and each symphony as a whole. In other words, I find they stand up well to the competition.

Just as Krips did, Tintner brought out both the Storm and Stress and the galant elements of the Haffner, No. 35, which are essential to its structure. With an orchestra of roughly 37 members, one may not expect the first entrance to be as robust as Krips and the Royal Philharmonic but it certainly is effective, just as are Pinnock and Hogwood, who seems to have a medium sized orchestra.

Symphony No. 40 goes its own way and apparently has long been regarded as a difficult work with many modern features, yet it seems to be the best known of all the Mozart symphonies. Maestro Tintner said, "To me, this work is not only Mozart's greatest symphony but the greatest symphony of all time," although some, including myself, prefer the Jupiter Symphony, No. 41. As well, many of us think some Haydn, Beethoven, and Brahms symphonies are in the running, too. Schumann is often quoted as finding a "Grecian lightness and grace" in No. 40 but most find it to be a dark and troubling work, although perhaps broken by some lightness in the Second Movement, the Andante. Maestro Tintner agrees with the majority on this, calling the music "gloomy, tragic, desperate," which he regards as reflecting Mozart's situation at that time in his life. Tintner's performance brings out the structure of the music and with a very good recording, every note is clear. He takes some of the tempos somewhat slower than many do in recent times but not excessively so. Critic Martin Bookspan liked the weighty Klemperer recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra, which is very slow in the first movement, though he found some other recordings brought out different aspects of the work. Personally, I like Symphony Nova Scotia's performance better and indeed, I think it is as good as any I have heard. Whether it is all that dark and troubling I leave to you. I think there is a considerable variation in mood and that this comes out in the music.

As I have suggested, the recordings are really quite clean and clear so that one can hear every note. Since one reviewer mentioned some hum, I listened to part of each track with tried my big Sennheiser headphones: still very clean and no hum! Imagine that. If there were any hum, you would certainly pick it up on headphones. The recordings are moderately close but still retain a realistic depth, and are really quite good.

Why have another recording of later Mozart symphonies? I suppose it's something of a philosophical question. Why have more than one recording of anything? I happen to conceive the main purpose of a review is to tell other people how good the performances and recording are and whether they are a good value, not to complain that there are enough recordings already. These are very fine performances, nicely recorded, and this CD is certainly a good value.

YOu will never go wrong here, but of you are looking for truly great and weighty interpretations step towards the DG Bohm or even Szell on Sony with even lower pricing.

Once again Naxos releases another dud in the series and this time a really big one. This orchestra just seems to have a snooze button on most of the time..on top the recording is not very clean with a sort of background hum at times which is disconcerting...

Orchestral brass are not always together and sometimes the woodwinds are having noticable intonation trouble...

All in all Naxos has to be considered at fault on this one. You can't serve the memory of a conductor by releasing the worst performance of a Mozart set of symphonies performed ever..try Marriner or Karajan even and at least there is some beauty of phrasing and sound.