Karl Böhm - Mozart: Wind Concertos and Serenades (2006)

Given that most folks who love the music of Mozart will probably already have their favorite recordings of his wind concertos and his best-known serenades and divertimentos, why should they seek out this seven-disc collection? Because, even if they already have Dennis Brain's horn concertos or Richard Stoltzman's clarinet concerto or James Galway's flute concertos, they still have to hear these performances of the same works by Günter Högner, Alfred Prinz, and Werner Tripp for three reasons. First, these players have the distinction of being the principal players from the world's greatest Mozart orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic; second, the accompaniment is provided by the same orchestra; and third, the conducting is provided by Karl Böhm, the Austrian said by some to be the greatest Mozart conductor of the middle years of the twentieth century. All this makes a difference -- a huge difference. Here, the tone, color, rhythm, phrasing, balances, indeed, everything about the performances is so wholly natural and wonderfully idiomatic that even the greatest wind virtuosos sound almost awkward by comparison. Even Böhm's performances of three big serenades with the Berlin Philharmonic sound so completely as one with the music that after them, it'll be hard to go back to even the finest performances by other players. Deutsche Grammophon's stereo sound is as good if not better than 90 percent of digital sound and these recordings are sonically fully competitive. ~ James Leonard