Thurston Dart; Joseph Keilberth; Bamberg Symp Orch - Mozart: Serenades

A first international CD issue for two contrasting albums of light-orchestral Mozart from Joseph Keilberth and Thurston Dart.The two albums reissued here exemplify the postwar revolution of Classical-era performance styles. Having begun to make records in 1938, the L�Oiseau-Lyre label worked in the vanguard of the period-performance movement, yet in 1951 the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and its long-time principal conductor Joseph Keilberth were engaged to record the Symphony KV 201 and the two sets of German Dances. They did so in Paris, the day after giving a concert in the Salle Pleyel to open a tour of France, Spain and Portugal. The sessions prompted a laconic diary reflection from Keilberth � �How hard it is to stick to a really secure 3/4 pulse� � but the authors of The Record Guide observed an unexpected lightness of touch about the results.L�Oiseau-Lyre�s founder Louise Dyer continued, however, to engage artists who were scholars as much as musicians � none more eminent than Thurston Dart, who had produced a scholarly edition of Couperin�s keyboard works on which much of the label�s reputation was founded, and who directed his own ensembles such as the Philomusica of London with a sure and lively touch. This recording of Eine kleine Nachtmusik was the first � and still one of the only � to insert a replacement for the work�s missing first minuet: in this case, Dart�s own orchestration of a movement from a piano sonata, following a suggestion made by Alfred Einstein. It was also the first album of Mozart�s orchestral music where the instrumentalists used �period� bows, lighter and differently balanced, lending a natural shapeliness to the phrases. �Joseph Keilberth, one of our most serious Wagnerians, appears here (though not on his other records) as a Mozartian stylist of distinction. He gets his orchestra to play most beautifully; and the recording � is very clean and clear, and tonally delightful.� The Record Guide (1955)�The result of these exercises is to remove the spuriously symphonic flesh that had over the years overspread this delightful little work and to make it what Mozart called it � �a delightful night music� � The important thing is that this performance is almost certainly a great deal nearer to what Mozart himself had in mind than any of the other recorded versions.� Gramophone, April 1955 (Dart)