As I said last month, when reviewing the concert and chamber music sets in this special EMI Mozart Edition, the packaging is somewhat unusual. The cardboard boxes (not unlike the old LP box set in design) contain a booklet common to all the issues, and each of the CDs is contained in a simple white sleeve. Obviously you have to take the disc out of the sleeve to see which one it is, a slightly tiresome business.
The three symphonies on disc 1 are Nos. 38, 40 and 41 in performances recorded in the late 1950s. They sound well enough, though whether they should be placed alongside the modern digital recordings by Sir Neville Marriner and the ASMF or Jeffrey Tate and the ECO is a question that you will perhaps answer differently according to the importance you give to sound-quality (reference to the list above, in fact, tells us that many of these recordings are fairly elderly). Age shows in other ways, too: you may think it a pity, as I do, that the exposition repeats in the first movements of Symphonies Nos. 40 and 41 are omitted by Klemperer and Beecham respectively, something which few conductors would do today; and that the septuagenarian Klemperer had such a soggy idea of what Mozart meant by molto allegro in the first movement of No. 40, as well as failing to achieve true ensemble at the start of the finale to the Paris Symphony. But No. 38 receives an alert and refined performance under Karajan and surprisingly little allowance has to be made for the 1958 sound.
The one missing symphony in this series is No. 28 in C major (No. 37 is only a fragment), which is regrettable for those of us who like completeness. But on the whole, this is an enjoyable sequence of performances, and that of the Haffner Symphony reminds me what a good Mozart conductor Rafael Kubelik was, especially when working with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Daniel Barenboim is another stylist in Nos. 30 and 33, working to good effect with the smaller, nimbler and essentially more authentic-sounding English Chamber Orchestra; here, incidentally, is another aspect of performance practice that has changed for the better in the last two decades, following the recognition that a medium-size string section does better justice to Mozart, as well as being historically correct. One could wish, indeed, to have heard Karajan playing the Linz Symphony with this fine body of players instead of the Berlin Philharmonic, for their Minuet here sounds obese. But Riccardo Muti's account of the deservedly famous A major Symphony, No. 29, has the right gentle sparkle with a degree of intimacy, and is helped by a refined recording made in 1976 in London's Kingsway Hall. In the one-movement Symphony No. 32 in G major and also in No. 34, Jeffrey Tate and the ECO are delightfully refined, with excellent string playing, yet still manage to bring out the wit and vitality of the music to good advantage.
Finally, in the early, and brief Symphonies Nos. 26 and 27 (the first of which resembles No. 32 in being in just one movement with a slower middle section), Marriner and his London orchestra are vivid and elegant by turns, giving excellent performances in recordings that are never less than good; while No. 39, the concluding work in this four-disc set, is in understanding hands with Barenboim and the ECO. All in all, however, I doubt whether this EMI set will offer the best value for money in a year when people adding to their Mozart collection are being spoilt for choice.'