Vittorio Gui - Mozart and Haydn

There was a recent commercial issue of other recordings by the fine conductor Vittorio Gui that inspired me to pull out this LP of Mozart's Prague Symphony and Haydn's Il Distratto. Gui was mainly known as an opera conductor, and these days if you see his name at all it will likely be on opera recordings he made during the decade he was the chief conductor at the Glyndebourne Festival.

This record is billed as being by the Glyndebourne Festival Orchestra, but that was just another name for Thomas Beecham's Royal Philharmonic. A contemporary review in the March 1954 Gramophone unfavorably contrasts Gui's version of the Mozart to Beecham's with the same orchestra. Today I doubt that either one would be considered especially stylish; tastes do change. However, the review is quite complementary of the Haydn performance and recording, and it is well worth hearing.