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Review by brenda April 14, 2005 (8 of 8 found this review helpful)
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Performance:  Sonics: |
The Figaro overture blares out of your speakers with a shrillness that can only be tamed by a drastic twisting (down) of the volume control. Thereafter things are much better, with the sound still being a little too shrill and slightly glassy, but acceptable. The soundstaging in surround is quite good, with some reverberation but a feeling now and again that the second violins shouldn’t come quite so much from behind on dying cadences.
As with the O’Hara concertos disc, this should have been cut at a much lower level if it was to capture more subtlety in the performances.However, there isn’t a lot of subtlety in the performances, - not that they’re bad, just prosaic. Glover is a somewhat prim orchestral conductor, whereas she takes more risks with the choral conducting which is her metier. The 40th suffers most from this, - you won’t find the exhilirating and spine tingling nervous tension of Britten and the ECO here, just Mozart by the numbers.
The Jupiter is fine, but again, not up to Bernstein or Davis, whose reading (with the Dresdeners) is equally “straight” but much more flowing.As with the O’Hara disc, this is acceptable as a budget SACD, but I’d advise to hold your horses till something better (on modern instruments) comes along.
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Review by Daland February 19, 2005 (8 of 8 found this review helpful)
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Performance:  Sonics:  |
Jane Glover, formerly artistic director of the London Mozart Players, gives very fine performances of Mozart's last two symphonies. This is "big band" Mozart at its best, apparently without any concessions to the authenticity movement. Those who believe that a large body of players is unsuitable for Mozart should read what the composer himself had to say about the matter. In a letter to his father he described in glowing terms how the Mannheim Orchestra had performed one of his symphonies with well over 60 players. He regretted that no such orchestra was available in Salzburg or Vienna.
In sonic terms, this is an attractive or even spectacular performance. The soundstage is quite wide, with the rear speakers audibly involved in the proceedings. As a result, the sound is a bit diffuse and not as clearly defined and natural as in other recordings. There is also a hint of edginess in the louder passages, but on balance, this SACD is a clear improvement on the redbook version (praised for its clarity at the time). The booklet says that up to 48 microphones were used in 1994 for this series to capture the tone quality of each and every instrument.
My overall impression is somewhat ambivalent. There is something artificial, but also something irresistible about this kind of surround sound. Whether you like it or not is, ultimately, a matter of taste.
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Sonics: 
