Beethoven, Schoenberg, Stravinsky & Others: Works for Orchestra (Live)

“… This 1994 performance with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra is energized and enjoyable. If you want a memento of a great conductor, the present CD offers that … very good sound. “

“This is a curious program—”eclectic” is the word for it. Most of it comes from a Salzburg Festival concert on 13 August 1979, but the Moussorgsky comes from 29 July 1994 at Salzburg. Fans of the conductor should enjoy this program very much. It certainly displays him, and the youth orchestras he championed, in excellent form… Orfeo’s recorded sound is excellent, not just “honest FM broadcast stereo” but approaching commercial recording quality. The miking is definitely closer in the Moussorgsky, which may contribute to the performance’s patchiness”

“From the Salzburg Festival archives come two distinct performances from the late Claudio Abbado (1933–2014), the major portion of the Orfeo disc being devoted to the 13 August 1979 appearance by Abbado with his European Community Youth Orchestra, an ensemble Abbado had helped to found in 1978. Commentators from the period of Abbado’s commitment to youthful orchestras often remark on the more relaxed, less homogeneously streamlined his conducting had become, remaining vital and alert while enjoying a degree of spontaneity his many commercial recorded performances lack… Fine brass playing from the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra convinces us that this version [Mussorgsky] deserves frequent exposure.” ****