George Szell, The Cleveland Orchestra Mozart* – Symphonies Nos. 39 & 40 Exsultate, Jubilate

As a rising star, Wolfgang was just 13 years old when he wrote the first of the brilliant symphonies that the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen is presenting on its new Genuin CD under the direction of Johannes Klumpp. The outstanding ensemble enters the third round of its Mozart recordings with four early symphonies from 1769 to 1773 – the period in which the young composer wrote most of his symphonic oeuvre. With a slender sound and historically informed means of expression, the top-class ensemble interprets the works of a teenager that still leave you amazed even after 250 years!

Rafael Kubelik recorded more Mozart than Haydn. I suspect that he performed more Haydn in concert. All of these are excellent, as is this #99- with a somewhat reduced orchestra. #99 is one of Haydn's greatest symphonies. It features a long, serious, and beautiful Adagio with a section for winds and great outer movements. Kubelik leads his great orchester energetically, giving due weight long first movement introduction and the sublime second movement.

Andris Nelsons is the Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and new Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. With both appointments, and in leading a pioneering alliance between these two esteemed institutions, he is firmly underlined as one of the most renowned, exciting and innovative conductors on the international scene today After the “scandalously successful” (Sunday Times) Symphony No. 10 in 2015, “the sheer expressive beauty” (Gramophone Magazine) of Symphonies Nos. 5, 8, 9 from 2016 and the “overbearing vividness” (The Guardian) of the most recent Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11 Nelsons and the BSO continue the acclaimed cycle with the Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7, complemented by two other works by Shostakovich, the Suite from the Incidental Music to “King Lear” op. 58a and the Festive Overture op. 96. The goal is a complete Shostakovich cycle on Deutsche Grammophon with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

This is a taut, dense Mahler 6, missing all the angst that one finds in the recordings of Bernstein or Tennstedt. But this "tragic" symphony is much less frantic than his others, and Dohnanyi's interpretation, so similar to Szell's with the Cleveland Orchestra, is the way I feel the symphony ought to be played. This ranks in my top three or four Mahler 6, along with Abbado Berlin, Karajan, and Szell.