Just as Philips presented the set of the Beethoven piano sonatas played by Alfred Brendel in a specially attractive package on CD (412 575-2PH11, 1/85), so here Sir Neville's excellent set of the later Mozart symphonies with the Academy is a delight to use, not just to hear, in its CD format. With one important transposition, the 21 symphonies—including Mozart's introduction to Symphony No. 37 (otherwise by Michael Haydn)—are presented in straight numerical order with no single symphony divided between discs. The exception is that No. 40, the great G minor, comes at the beginning of the second disc immediately after the little G minor, No. 25, a fair enough arrangement, when the result is otherwise so neat.
I suspect also that that rearrangement has been devised to minimize the discrepancy in sound between that recording of No. 40, made in 1970 (eight or nine years before the rest), and the surrounding symphonies. Symphony No. 35, the Haffner, is also from that earlier date and though the CD transfers of the main body of these symphonies are excellent, hardly at all betraying that they are analogue recordings, the boomy bass of No. 35, and to a lesser extent that of No. 40, is brought out quite sharply in the new medium.
It is hardly enough to undermine enjoyment and in my comparisons for the review of Sir Charles Mackerras's new coupling of Nos. 32, 35 and 39 (see above), not only this Haffner but the other two symphonies as well stood up remarkably well next to their rivals, often the most polished performances of all, fresh and urgent on the one hand, elegant on the other. It was an amazing achievement that Marriner in this massive project consistently avoided any hint of routine in the playing of the Academy. Only in the Jupiter, direct and dramatic rather than grand, is the intensity a degree lower, but even that is fresh and enjoyable.'