1st movement

2nd movement

3rd movement

1st movement

2nd movement

3rd movement

Bassoon Concerto K191

• 1st movement
• 2nd movement
• 3rd movement

Symphony No 40

• 1st movement
• 2nd movement
• 3rd movement
• 4th movement

Symphony No 41 Jupiter

• 1st movement
• 2nd movement
• 3rd movement
• 4th movement

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Click on image for full size printable inlay image	1st movement 2nd movement 3rd movement

"De Peyer plays the Clarinet Concerto most beautifully. The limpid tone and style will be the more universally winning because they are not associated with a vibrato, except of the most fractional nature and in the places crying out aloud for it ; and the finished technique speaks for itself, if sometimes rather readily--it is possible to feel in some of the more arresting phrases that de Peyer wishes to overtake the orchestra. In fact he doesn't, and Collins has succeeded in ensuring a most satisfactory and stylish ensemble ; though it may be that conductor and soloist found difficulty in agreeing on the elusive right tempo for the Rondo. Everywhere de Peyer adheres strictly to the notes Mozart wrote, or to the notes the early editions, possibly arranged, bequeathed to posterity ; and there are places where a little editing does improve the effect. Add a warm recording, and I have no hesitation whatever in thinking this the best version of the Concerto available." M.M. writing in the Gramophone February 1955

Click on image for full size printable inlay image	Kyrie and gloria Credo and sanctus Benedictus and Agnus Dei
Click on image for full size printable inlay image	1st movement 2nd movement 3rd movement

" A strong, satisfying performance of one of the choicest, most highly individual concertos. It is richly recorded, in fine purity. The recording can be well recommended. Kentner is a good though not (so far as this recording shows) a superlative Mozartean. " Review in the Gramophone September 1940

Click on image for full size printable inlay image	1st movement 2nd movement 3rd movement
Click on image for full size printable inlay image	1st movement 2nd movement 3rd movement

" Yet another Mozart piano concerto from Denis Matthews, this time the famous A major so notoriously difficult to bring off in a recording, or for that matter in performance. Readers who turn up my reviews of three earlier LP performances (Gieseking in December, Clifford Curzon in April, Liii Kraus in May) will find small content with any of them. This new Matthews disc strikes me as the best version available; but I would welcome it with all the reservations made before in the cases of his K.595, 414 and 49, reviewed this month and last. That is to say the performance is a gentle, grisaille one, without much vitality of rhythm or keenness of attack, a tasteful, delicate performance, neatly executed. Matthews uses Mozarts sketch of a cadenza in the first movement, plays the second as written (i.e. without filling in the gaps, as Liii Kraus did), and is so reticent in the finale that some of the notes in arpeggios which should surely sound brilliant disappear altogether. The orchestral support is tidy, pleasant in tone, rather undervitalised. The recording is agreeable, and in accord with the generally subdued effect." A.P. writing in the Gramophone November 1954

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1st and 2nd movements 3rd and 4th movements 5th, 6th and 7th movements

"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

Click on image for full size printable inlay image	1st movement 2nd movement 3rd movement 4th movement
Click on image for full size printable inlay image

With his ample (not amplified) tones and extended compass, Alexander Kipnis can do effortless justice to all those bass solos we know so well as having been favourites with the operatic audiences of a past era. And they can be favourites still when sung by artists of the Kipnis stamp ; we may be sure of that. HK reviwing in the Gramophone October 1931

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