Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Allegro moderato
2. Adagio
3. Presto
4. Allegro moderato
5. Andante
6. Rondeau Allegro
7. Largo, Allegro
8. Andante
9. Allegretto
10. Molto Allegro
11. Andante
12. Presto

Disc 2:

1. Allegro
2. Adagio
3. Rondeau Allegro
4. Allegro
5. Andante cantabile
6. Rondeau, Andante grazioso
7. Allegro aperto
8. Adagio
9. Rondeau, Tempo di Menuetto

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #122056 in Music
• Released on: 2001-04-23
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered, Import

Customer Reviews

There Must Be A Better Way To Reissue
Sometimes I think the people who came up with the Philips 50 reissue series weren't thinking very clearly. Some of these releases have been done very intelligently, but many times the Philips 50 titles have too closely followed and often duplicated the material in the Philips Duo series. For example, Colin Davis recorded two glowing accounts of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique for the label, one with the London Symphony Orchestra and a later one with the Concertgebouw. The Philips Duo features his earlier one with LSO while the Conertgebouw recording became available in 1999 as part of the Penguin Classics series. So in 2001 they decide they need another Concertgebouw release via the Philips 50 series -- no wonder they deleted it and no wonder new classical buyers never know what to buy! They got it all wrong again with the Philips 50 of Colin Davis performing Sibelius' 5th and 7th Symphonies, and the Mahler 9th by Bernard Haitink (see my reviews). Anyway, I ramble because I'm frustrated!

So let's get down to this Mozart Violin Concertos set with Colin Davis and Arthur Grumiuax, which by the way is a fabulous performance rivaled only in my opinion by Isaac Stern's with George Szell and Alexander Schneider on Sony. When the Philips Duo was already available with all five Violin Concertos, the Adagio, the Rondo and Sinfonia Concertante, why do you re-release the five concertos, add two Violin Sonatas, subtract the other three aforementioned pieces and charge more? I mean Clara Haskil is fantastic but she's not worth less music and more money. I'm being kind by giving this title four stars (but I will because the music is terrific), yet pass on the Philips 50 and stick with the Philips Duo. And Universal, look into whose running things over at Philips!

Finally Mozart with "Style"!
I love these recordings! Grumiaux plays with sparkle and finesse and Colin Davis conducts the exactly the same way!

I'm glad they re-released these on Philips 50 label...much deserved!


Breathe in the fresh air and spring warmth of these recordings! Ahhh...

Deserves better reviews and reviewers
These recordings were, for many years, considered to be among the best available. This is delightful old-style Mozart (meaning not period instrument) played beautifully and with character by the artists. I'm happy to see them reissued in a form that gives them some recognition and dignity (instead of the kitschy budget-box format they've been seen in earlier). That and better sound. Philips has not been "packing" the discs in this series so the selling point can be "79 minutes of music!". Someone with taste and discretion did the selecting and if any compromises were made in this entire series it was toward a good sampling of the classical repertoire. I'm annoyed, as I've encountered endless moaning and voiding in reviews of a lot of the Universal re-releases from the last decade. We're lucky to see ANY of these recordings in print.

The only way to hear Haskil and Grumiaux play together (and wonderfully) is through old recordings. Sorry. Clara Haskil was a great keyboard artist who specialized in much older repertoire back when most were still focusing on the Romantic works. Few things bug me more in Amazon reviews than people getting all astonished and huffy about their Toscanini or Schnabel CDs sounding old and then betraying their ignorance of the whole genre by publicly advertising their annoyance. I think its asking too much to have Amazon list the recording dates as these are not always easy to find on a CD package and error would be rampant. A little research--say Google Haskil and find out who she was--is required.

Like most of this series, these will probably be going out of print soon and that should make all the sonic perfectionists and re-packaging authorities happy-as-heck. Recommended to them--cheap Naxos discs with modern unknowns who play without any emotional connection with the music, or Sony recordings of 9-year-old Japanese freak-show wunderkinds wowing their way digitally through technicolor Mozart. I'll stick with Scherchen and his "awful" Vienna orchestra with "awful" sound playing Liszt with genuine passion.