Vittorio Gui Conducts Haydn and Mozart

Just about 10 years ago I offered my transfer of this recording, with the Italian conductor Vittorio Gui (1885-1975) leading 1953 performances of Haydn and Mozart symphonies. Recently I pulled out that transfer, but was none too happy with what I had wrought back then. So I found the record and had another go at it. Today's post is the result.

Gui is remembered primarily as an opera conductor because many if not most of his commercial recordings were of opera. Even on this LP, he is leading an opera ensemble, the Glyndeborne Festival Orchestra. Then again, the Glyndeborne band was just another name for the Royal Philharmonic. It appeared under the Glyndeborne banner because Gui was the music director at that festival, where he held sway from 1951-63. He also founded the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 1933.

These are fine performances, especially of the Haydn "Il Distratto" symphony. The young Andrew Porter, writing in The Gramophone, was particularly taken with the Haydn, less so by the Mozart Symphony No. 38, which he downgraded for some untidy ensemble and a sluggish first movement. His review is in the download, along with the HMV ad for the LP (see below). Both symphonies are well recorded, with the Haydn being particularly sonorous. My transfer is from a U.S. pressing issued by RCA Victor.

I have a few other Gui recordings that I will be presenting later on - another Mozart-Haydn pairing made during the same 1953 sessions, and a Wagner set from Florence, also recorded that year.

Follow @BusterBig10Inch

HMV's offerings for March 1954 - click to enlarge

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.