Prejudice, Mozart, and inheritance
My ongoing task to rip my LP records to the music server has been going in fits and starts, but the past weekend I lighted on a boxed set of discs I inherited from my Dad : 11 or so Mozart symphonies (between no.25 and no.41 if you were wondering), 6 Overtures and other music played by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Otto Klemperer, and recorded by Columbia in the early to mid 1960s.
I have to admit I had neither a prediliction for either Mozart, in any great way, nor for the Germanic/Romantic school of conductors. Ever since David Munrow started bringing historical scholarship to musical performances of Medieval music, and the movement spread forward in time to the Baroque and Classical periods, I've really liked the lean, lithe and spritely performances of outfits such as Trevor Pinnock's English Concert, and Christopher Hogwood's Academy of Ancient Music. This was the true path to Enlightement, as it were.
So I approached Klemperer's "big band" Mozart with a cool detachment, and a let's get these "ripped" quickly for completeness' sake. After all, how enjoyble could such stodgy performances sound, of music that's never really done a lot for me? (As an ex-clarinettist I'd listened to, and tried to play, the Clarinet concerto, and I liked the G minor Symphony (no.40)).
Unlike ripping a CD, ripping an LP can only be done in real time: you have to actually play the thing. You have to listen out for stuck grooves, and major ticks, after all, though I had washed and vacuumed the discs before playing so they were probably as good or better than new. Well, the whole 6-disc set was a real eye-opener, or should that be mind-opener. Not only were the Philharmonia playing with verve, charm, delicacy, emotion, and force, Herr Klemperer (by then about 80, I think) didn't conduct with the leaden-footed, stern approach I was expecting. Thin out the strings, change the timbre of the woodwind, and you could easily have one of the original instrument bands playing.
So what started out as a task became a really enjoyable time, discovering what I'd dismissed for decades! Aside from the performances, the recordings - made in the much lamented acoustic of the Kingsway Hall in London - were full-bodied and clear. Indeed a Philips CD issue I have of Symphony no.40 sounds dull and lifeless in comparison. If you add Klemperer's left-right division of 1st and 2nd violins (which should be mandatory in every single orchestral recording), the recordings can be considered almost state of the art.
Trawling the web I found the original LP sleeves to display on the server when playing the ripped files to complete the picture.
Another one of Dad's LP sets is of Dvorak symphonies. I'll approach this one with a mind already open.