Extra Tracks

Below are tracks from our library that never made it onto one of our compact discs. They can be downloaded here as high quality 320kbs AAC encoded (MP3) files. Those originating on 78rpm discs are raw and no attempt to clean up the surface noise had been made although we have removed some loud cracks and bangs. Please note the previews are compressed files so the sound is not as good as that on the whole track.

Tracks can be downloaded from this page,
price GBP 0.50 each

Purchasers of tracks have unlimited personal use but must not pass or sell on to third parties nor broadcast without prior permission from PPL

Peter Maag (1919-2001)

Click on image for full size printable inlay image

"It is no doubt an excellent thing to make a recording of Mozart's piece d'occasion, the Post Horn Serenade, so long as listeners realise that it is that, and no more - a charming, rather protracted, graceful work, written for the Archbishop of Salzburg in 1779, for some ceremony or other. Decca.'s sympathetic annotator admits, on the cardboard cover, that performance of the work 'was probably spread out over the evening with intervals between the movements'. I must confess I find the piece rather long to sit down and listen to at a sitting ; and I am convinced such listening was never intended by the composer. This is surely ideal background music -- the music a really cultured court would commission and use as an accompaniment to, say, an investiture like that in early April, where the Guards' band played softly in the gallery. Broadly, it may be said that Maag and Switzerland are more French, expressive, sensitive, alive to moods. Maag goes out for contrasts. There is a general reediness about the string tone, which warms up at times ; softer passages are better reproduced than louder, and give us much pleasant sound, with the right amount of back-echo. The drums are oddly uncertain in pitch, at one point sinking practically a whole tone. Wood-wind is good, in playing and reproduction ; but the post horn itself is produced like a rabbit out of a hat at a children's party, with far too much 'hey presto' and prominence. Maag puts himself out to make the most of Mozart's prettinesses, and has no fear of romanticising them. The Trio in II is pleasing. Both III and IV are treated with a delightful, gay insouciance, Frenchified almost but engaging, and definitely as if the score were marked expressif. This mood, like the one they give to V, suits the Suisse Romande players well. Orchestral balance is good, and the reproduced sound is fairly even as it reaches us, with few crackles and wobbles. H.F. writing in the Gramophone June 1952

Download the whole serenade for GBP 1.50

1st and 2nd movements

3rd and 4th movements

5th, 6th and 7th movements

More Beulah Extra tracks