Mozart: Symphonies Volume 4

The four symphonies on this disc were all composed by the 15-year-old Mozart for Italian orchestras. Already the complete professional, he wrote with the needs of particular orchestras or even individual players in mind. The results, as we hear them on this fourth volume of Adam Fischer’s series, are fun, bracing, and quite unmemorable. It was still several years before the stupendous talent would shift into incomparable genius.

Our rating

5

Michael Beek

Published: January 20, 2012 at 4:30 pm

COMPOSERS: Mozart
LABELS: Dacapo
WORKS: Symphonies: Nos 12-14; in C, KV96
PERFORMER: Danish National CO/Adam Fischer
CATALOGUE NO: 6.220539

The four symphonies on this disc were all composed by the 15-year-old Mozart for Italian orchestras. Already the complete professional, he wrote with the needs of particular orchestras or even individual players in mind. The results, as we hear them on this fourth volume of Adam Fischer’s series, are fun, bracing, and quite unmemorable. It was still several years before the stupendous talent would shift into incomparable genius.

Fischer’s Danish players perform with energy, a certain refreshing rawness and, when required, a nicely tapering phrase. The recording is quite close and detailed but not oppressive. The most substantial of the four pieces is the last, in A major, and already shows the way that Mozart felt about that key, one in which some of his loveliest works are composed. This has a fairly ambitious first movement, and a rousing finale.

Fischer gives us his thoughts on the symphonies in the booklet. Of the first movement of Symphony No. 14 he writes: ‘I am standing on the beach. The water in the bay is blue, so is the sky. Two ducks swim by, the smaller, with some delay, imitating each movement of the larger one. In the distance gulls are flying.’ Some people may find that more helpful than I do. Michael Tanner

Reviews Editor, BBC Music Magazine

Michael is the Reviews Editor of BBC Music Magazine. He looks after the 26 pages of recording and book reviews in the magazine each month, deciding what will be reviewed – no easy task with so much being sent in for consideration! Michael joined the team in 2018, following ten years as a freelance film music journalist and fifteen years at St George's Bristol. Film and television music is his favourite thing, and when he’s not listening to things to be reviewed in the mag, Michael loves nothing more than to listen to the music of John Williams and James Horner – his favourite film composers. He was the Editor of MusicfromtheMovies.com and has written for the BBC Proms, BBC Concert Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Albert Hall, Hollywood in Vienna and Silva Screen Records. His favourite writing gigs so far have been programmes for each of the Doctor Who Proms, soundtrack album notes for Doctor Who – Series 4 and Torchwood – Children of Earth, plus programmes and features for live concert screenings of Jurassic Park, Gladiator, Back to the Future and Raiders of the Lost Ark. While he never got the chance to interview the late James Horner, Michael was delighted to spend an hour on the phone with John Williams for the 2020 Christmas issue of BBC Music Magazine. Also a presenter, Michael has hosted concerts and live events for Bristol Film Festival and St George's Bristol, plus Debbie Wiseman's ‘Music and Words from Wolf Hall’ shows at venues across the UK. Michael has worked regularly with Debbie Wiseman over the years, writing concert programmes and scripts (for Terry Wogan and Simon Bates) and producing her 2011 album Piano Stories.