Josef Krips - Brahms: Symphony No. 4; Mozart: Symphony No. 39 (1950/52) [2010]

Krips' Brahms "sensitive, vigorous, and poised to a nicety"

Superb new transfer finally does proper justice to marvellous recordings


One has to smile today at the final sentence in the Gramophone review reproduced above of Decca's 1950 LP issue of this recording - the 78s referred to appeared a few months after the Brahms Symphony's vinyl issue, and it's hard to believe today that many critics seriously felt that 78s had more to offer the music lover than the LP which so swiftly eradicated them after half a century of total dominance.

For sure some of the early LPs could be a bit hit and miss, quality wise, and the same can be said for the recordings, as witnessed here. Analysis of the 1950 Brahms recording shows a true full frequency response heading right up to the maximum available on a modern CD, whereas the 1951 Mozart recording, made by the same company in the same hall with the same producer, orchestra and conductor (the engineer in unknown for the Brahms but the legendary Kenneth Wilkinson was chief knob-twiddler for the Mozart) peters out with an upper limit of 12kHz, something one might have expected from a wartime recording, but not in late 1951.

But it seems that even today these recordings have suffered. Having first heard the quality of the LPs from which these transfers were taken, I was rather surprised to hear the hard-toned, overly-hissy and quite flat-pitched transfers they received in a Decca CD issue a very few short years ago. I had heard the Brahms first, and was delighted by both the performance and the recording, especially after initial investigations (using XR remastering for my own pleasure). When I heard how much improvement I had been able to make over Decca's own CD transfers I decided to press on, later adding the Mozart to the set for this release.

The sound here is clear, clean, full and well-focussed, perhaps more so in the Brahms than the Mozart, with its aforementioned frequency deficiency. Both, however, are a clear improvement on the now apparently-deleted Decca CD box set of 2003.

Andrew Rose


Tracks:

BRAHMS Symphony No. 4
MOZART Symphony No. 39

Personnel:

London Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Josef Krips