Description

“There are two clearly outstanding performances. Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony is a very exciting affair, full of passion and fire, with some very marked but extraordinarily convincing rubatos and fluctuations of tempo. The 1940 performance of the Eroica Symphony is one previously thought to come from a May 1943 concert. Here a powerfully expressive, monumental interpretation of the score is made manifest. The Tannhäuser and Egmont Overtures are excitingly played. Guila Bustabo gives a richly communicative, brilliantly played performance of the Bruch concerto. Herman Krebbers also gives a satisfying account of the Brahms.”

– Alan Sanders in Gramophone

“In these days of the faceless musical interpreter, a conductor like Willem Mengelberg can seem like a godsend, a one-man antidote to the poisonous routine of most modern performances. Perhaps this is the most important lesson to be learned from this four-CD set of live recordings made from 1938-1944: that when a musician has something personal to say with the music being performed, the results are rarely dull.”

– Timothy Morgan in HPR

“For the serious Mengelberg collector this represents an important collection, and will probably self-recommend.”

– Henry Fogel in Fanfare

“[This set] includes classic readings not to be missed, such as a thrustful, personal Beethoven Eroica.”

– Dan Davis in Classical Pulse!

“One always thinks of Mengelberg as a romantic conductor, so it comes as something of a surprise to find him adjusting his own style to the composer. There is not one manner here, but several, each gauged to the work in question. Was Mengelberg, late in life, responding to modernism by rethinking his relation to the past? These recordings are well worth having.”

– David Radcliffe in American Record Guide

MENGELBERG: PUBLIC PERFORMANCES WITH THE CONCERTGEBOUW ORCHESTRA TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 5 (1939); DVORAK: Violin Concerto in a (1943), with Maria Neuss, violin; BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 3 (1940), Egmont Overture (1943); DEBUSSY: Fantasie for Piano & Orchestra (1938), with Walter Gieseking, piano; BRAHMS: Symphony No. 3 and Violin Concerto in D (1943), Herman Krebbers, violin; SCHUBERT: Sonata in a (1940) with Gaspar Cassado, ce