Vittorio Gui Conducts = MOZART: Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K. 543; HAYDN: Symphony No. 95 in C Minor – Glyndebourne Festival Orchestra/Vittorio Gui
Pristine Audio PASC 143, 47:22 [www.pristineclassical.com] ***:
Some years ago, I interviewed conductor Robert Feist, a man of considerable operatic conducting experience who praised three influences on his own stylistic approach: Gavazzeni, Previtali, and Gui. Curiously, aside from the one or two opera performances with Vittorio Gui (1885-1975) I knew from Glyndebourne, my sole LHMV LP was in fact this very transfer to Pristine Audio’s XR remastering process, the 1954 combination of Mozart and Haydn symphonic works.
The Mozart 39th proceeds along strong, middle European lines, fraught with interior woodwind panoply and a steady pulse from which rocket figures rise with somber intensity. The measured pace and rich sonority might well have provided a model for Carlo Maria Giulini. The Allegro enjoys a muscular girth and pungent metric clarity, the cadences ceremonial, lithely inflamed. No repeat for the first movement exposition, but the creamy legato statement of the semi-martial figure takes on a rich tapestry of orchestral stretti marked by a fluid sense of form, right back to the recapitulation. Whatever Germanic impulses the performance reveals might well be attributed to Fritz Busch, who long commanded symphonic forces at Glyndebourne.
The lightness, clarity, and expressiveness of the Andante hints as much of Karl Bohm as it does of Toscanini. The palpably galant style of development finds in Gui a naturally aristocratic expression, the musical periods set off in resplendent periods in a layered, Viennese series of rich pastels. Wonderful attack opens the Minuet and Trio, an Austrian laendler with martial ambitions. While Gui’s thrusts are not so heaven-storming as those of Furtwaengler in this movement, they retain a fierce urgency and silken legato. The clarinet, in its deep chalumeau register, complements the sonorous horn and strings, which flow effortlessly in the manner of peasant dance that explodes, da capo, to the opening, swaggering march. The sonata-form Finale hurtles by, but not by sacrificing the marvelous scales in bassoon, flute, clarinet, and strings, the metric asymmetries that challenge us at every turn with heroic invention. Bravura Mozart, bold and exuberant, a dazzling confection for the ear and heart.
Haydn’s C Minor Symphony (1791), its potent sturm aund drang without a slow introduction, has beguiled many a distinguished interpreter on records, including Beecham, Reiner, and Bernstein. The only London Symphony set in a minor key, it challenges the interpreter to find its bountiful sources of light in the midst of emotional turmoil. Gui keeps the first movement active, alternating its somber pungency with the songfulness that marks its galant pathos. The Andante delivers us a series of flowing variations, eminently stately and often thinning the texture to chamber music proportions. Lovely bass work from the Glyndebourne players, their intrinsic pulse steady as a rock. That Gui can mold an aria in the midst of diverse, ripe orchestral textures appears his special gift. The soft decrescendi near the end of the movement radiate a serene joy in music-making. An acerbic bite marks the Minuet and Trio, the strings and winds savoring the appoggiaturas that invest the strongly accented, martial figures, more often than not lighting the way for Beethoven. A richly textured cello marks out the Trio in rustic hay, a minor concerto in which soft and plucked violins answer in debonair colloquy. The Rondo in dark colors moves with dire intensity under Gui, almost a vivace from a requiem or liturgy, except the clarinets want to dance in the middle of a storm. And that storm does become a real earth-shaker, reminiscent of the last movement of Haydn’s own Seven Last Words on the Cross.
–Gary Lemco
