A great idea, poorly executed.

What should have been a wholly fascinating and enjoyable voyage of discovery (very little is heard on the concert platform of the "minor" contemporaries of Mozart) is sadly transformed into a bland and poorly recorded set.

The offerings on this pair of discs are:
Gossec - Symphony in B flat
J C Bach - Symphony in E
Vanhal - Sinfonia's in F and G minor
Dittersdorf - Sinfonia in F "Die vier Weltalter"
Mahaut - Symphony for strings in C minor
Reicha - Symphony in E flat
Kraus - Symphony in C minor

The music is not, in any favourable way, really comparable to Mozart and needs conviction and electricity to stand repeated listening. None of the symphonies here are given that from the Cappella Coloniensis under either Hans-Martin Linde or Ulf Björlin. The playing is neat and tidy but none of the performers really sound engaged or stimulated by the music and if they can't be, why should we?

Hopefully one of the Kuijken family, Harnoncourt or Simon Murphy could be persuaded to embark on a similar project and we could have a more interesting experience - this is not two hours of listening that I would encourage anyone to embark upon unless they must hear one of the works on offer.

Capriccio have been very coy about recording dates, offering only a publication date of 2006. I suspect these emanate from several years earlier and were reprocessed - if not then this is a terrible indictment on WDR! The sound is distant and not at clear like one would normally expect and is just one more reason not to buy the disc.

Sadly not recommended.

Copyright © 2007 John Broggio and HRAudio.net

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