Thursday, April 25, 2013

Mozart by Mitropoulos

The great Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960) was renowned as an interpreter of 20th century music, but one hardly associates him at all with music before Beethoven (except for a few orchestral transcriptions of Bach organ works).  He made only one commercial recording of Mozart's music, other than a concerto accompaniment (for Vronsky and Babin in the concerto for two pianos), and that was of a piece so obscure that it represented a first on records at the time.  This was of two entr'actes from his incidental music for "Thamos, King of Egypt" - a play by Tobias Philipp von Gelber that is only remembered today because of Mozart's music:

Mozart: Thamos, King of Egypt, K. 345 - Entr'actes 1 and 2
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos
Recorded December 3, 1940
Columbia Masterworks 11578-D, one 78-rpm record
Link (FLAC files, 17.33 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 9.67 MB)

2 comments:

  1. Many thanks for this one, Bryan. I love Mitropoulos' recordings, and this is a real rarity.

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  2. We're listening to music by Alexander Lim, after hearing a symphony by Cartellario or some such. Ever hear of them?

    Love,
    Mother and Daddy

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