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I've come to appreciate Korngold in the last few years. Knew him of course for the many fine movie scores of the early Hollywood era. But a couple of seasons ago I heard his Violin Concerto. So now I've been interested in his Symphony in F and was hoping for a good recommendation.
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I've found that the recommendations I get here are almost to a one, right on the money!
Nobody has yet mentioned excellent recordings by:
Previn/LSO on DG
Downes/BBC Philharmonic on Chandos
Neither however surpasses the Kempe original on pristine RCA vinyl in my view.
I was going to mention those two but not being a Korngold authority (or any kind of authority for that matter) in face of the expected reverence for Kempe I resisted. But since you have, let me add that the Downes version on Chandos is very enjoyable and the recording is unlike much of earlier Chandos. Great clarity with a good hall prospective. Previn is a bit larger in scale, more forward, and loses some of the sense of hall. But its very enjoyable and I much preferred its disc mate. I could live with either (I guess I do). Some day I'll get a copy of Kempe's.
FWIW.
. . . the Munich Philharmonic's string intonation in the last movement is not great. (Evidently, F-sharp major is a hard key for strings - at least the way Korngold writes in it!) I still have this recording, but I keep it more for sentimental reasons than musical.
I read some good reports about the fairly recent (2010) SACD with Marc Albrecht and Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra on Pentatone, but I haven't heard it myself.
Oh - just remembered: I did not like the Franz Welser-Möst recording, but that was more because of the engineering, which sounded too multi-miked for my taste, than the performance. Perhaps I might be more accepting of the sound quality if I heard it again.
I have three, the old Kemp version which may have been the first recording ever, and one of the latest on Pentatone, Get the Pentatone for a fine performance with outstanding sonics.
I think you would like the Albrecht. Provincial European orchestras are light years better than they were back in the 1950s and before. They used to release some awful performances on labels like Urania, Richmond, Westminster, etc. I had a lot of 'em because they were cheap.
I've had occasion to recommend some recent outstanding recordings by the Duisberg Philharmonic on the Accousence label.
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