Mozartiana Recording

[PhiladelphiaOrchestra]

I have seen Mozartiana many times, and have heard many recorded versions. I have never quite felt that the ballet was adequately recorded: it was either lugubrious, or else sounded like bad Txhaikovsky or iffy Mozart.

However, in the past few years the Czech label Supraphon has opened its archives and released conductor Vaclav Talich's recording of MOZARTIANA, which was a specialty of his. You really have to hear it: it bubbles like champagne and is so lovely, se deft and charming. What a performance!

Coming from a long line of musicians, see if you can get a copy of this recording on CD. You won't be disappointed

[Jack Reed]

I don't disagree with the above post, not having heard the performance, but as a mere music-lover, not a musician, I'd like to nominate my own long-time favorite, the very vital-sounding 1980 performance of the Philharmonia Orchestra (Carl Pini, solo violin) conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, still available on Sony MDK 46503 with the Suite No. 2, or less appealingly in an eight-CD set with other Tchaikovsky pieces conducted by Claudio Abbaddo which I haven't heard either, but -- here's a plus -- also with the first CD reissue as far as I know of Tilson Thomas's very beautiful performance of the Suite No. 3 (also choreographed by Balanchine, of course, the last movement being the "sound track" for his Theme and Variations) with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Sometimes there are more or less brief excerpts of available recordings to be heard on the Internet these days, but I haven't been able to find any for either the Talich or Tilson Thomas performances.

[Juliet]

These are all available on Amazon (click above)

hint, hint.......

[Jack Reed]

When I search Amazon using "Mozartiana Talich" and "Mozartiana Tilson Thomas" as search terms, I find only "Preghiera" by Talich but the CD I mentioned by Tilson Thomas. Did I miss something? I often feel my searches on that site aren't comprehensive.

[Juliet]

Frequently, the search needs to be as simple as possible, in this case, "Talich Tchaikovsky"........

Mozartiana is here indexed as Mozartia. I bought the symphony/suite collection with Tilson Thomas as mine went missing after being lent out....

Librarians and professional researchers will always advise: simplify searches and assume that no one can spell.....I was happy that I didn't have to wade through all the possible transliterations of Tchaikovsky, frankly.

Let me know if you are still unsuccessful and I'll send you the link via PM.

[Jack Reed]

I found it, Juliet! Thanks for the hint. Unfortunately, no samples to listen to.

With regard to the Tchaikovsky symphonies in the set you ordered, I suppose you know what you're getting if it's a replacement, so I hope you're happier than I am with Abbaddo's performances, which seem to me to follow some of the tradition of distorting Tchaikovsky's music.

I wonder if you know the old Maazel/Vienna Philharmonic set of the symphonies on London, still available. These seem to me admirably straighforward (and ably characterised on Amazon by a Japanese fan of them). Unfortunately, I couldn't find any samples to listen to of these, either. (In recent years, Maazel has subjected Tchaikovsky to some untraditional distortions of his own.)

[Juliet]

I bought them for the Tilson Thomas pieces. (I am a great MTT fan!) His Giselle is also a great favourite of mine (be warned: no peasant pdd)....

[Estelle]

I know about nothing about music, but about Mozartiana: I had bought more than a decade ago a CD of it in the Melodiya collection, performed by the USSR symphony orchestra conducted by Evgueni Svetlanov at a very cheap price and enjoyed it a lot... and now I regret not buying more CDs of that collection, as they are very hard to find in France (and generally far more expensive than they used to be).

[Jack Reed]

The MTT Suites Nos. 2 and 4 are available separately, as are the Maazel/VPO Symphonies, for what it's worth; but that Suite No. 3 performance is a great one.

I'm beginning to get the hang of searching for music samples on the web; while Google has nothing comparable to its Image and Video searches for sound, Yahoo and Altavista do offer sound-file searches, with Altavista returning more hits (in my limited experience with this) than Yahoo, but neither is finally of much use for the kind of comparisons we're discussing.

But most productive is Google's Web search, which of course searches for pages with specified words on them. So I specify the phrase "Listen to Sample" which appears on pages where you can do exactly that, and I include words to narrow the search to the composer or composition in question (now trying to keep in mind Juliet's misspelling advice as well), or to a particlar web site.

But on my own, without a search engine, I've stumbled across web pages with a menu of sound samples to hear but no characteristic words, just a little "loudspeaker" or musical-note icon. What to do to search for such pages in a methodical, "wholesale" way?

Anyway, by that method, I've now heard a sample of "Gigue" from Talich's Mozartiana, and I think it's good and lively, if maybe a little bit forced, compared to Tilson-Thomas's?