This album, which contains performances never on CD before, is derived from these original albums (among others):

BTW, I read that the "Festival Chamber Orchestra" was really the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, which, for contractual reasons at the time, could not appear under their actual organizational name on the Mercury label. EDIT: I guess I should have read Rob Cowan's sidebar post before I wrote that! According to Cowan, the "Festival Chamber Orchestra" was actually the "Bath Festival Chamber Orchestra", familiar to listeners from some of the Menuhin-conducted recordings on EMI/Angel/Capitol.

It would be great if Tom Fine, who did the magnificent remasterings of the Tchaikovsky Orchestra Suites with Dorati and the New Philharmonia were in charge of these new Mozart and Haydn reissues, but I kind of doubt that he was. (This would likely have resulted in the Plangent Process being used, as it was on that Dorati/Tchaikovsky Orchestral Suites album.) The most detailed information I've found concerning this set is on the Presto Classical site (link below) - Rob Cowan, on the sidebar for the Presto Classical detailed listings, notes that these recordings have "sparkle, bite, and weight", and that the performances are "firm, vital readings, employing a large but not swollen orchestra. The precision of the playing is outstanding, and the individual instrumental contributions are beautifully realized."

It looks like this new Haydn/Mozart reissue is also on Qobuz, of which I'll be availing myself soon. I should note too that HDTT has their own remaster of the Haydn Farewell and Mozart 40 available for download too - I have it and it's very good. But of course this new Decca reissue has the advantage of having access to the original masters (assuming that they're still in decent shape).

And, BTW, there were OTHER "missing" MLP performances issued a couple of months ago on the Decca Eloquence series, including the Dorati/LSO Schumann Fourth Symphony and the Schmidt-Isserstedt/LSO performances of Mozart's Symphonnies 39 and 41. I remember the Dorati Schumann Fourth as being one of the most outstanding performances of that work I'd ever heard. It will be interesting now to see if my memory of that performance holds up as I listen to it again. I'm very excited about all this!

p.s.: there are still some Mercury stereo titles which to my knowledge have never been issued on CD, including the Paray/Detroit Beethoven Symphonies 1 and 2, and Mozart Haffner Symphony, as well as all the Szigeti recordings done with Mercury. About the latter, the story I read is that Wilma was somewhat embarrassed by Szigeti's dubious intonation at that stage of his career and refused to remaster those recordings, although I think that at least a couple of them were issued independently in Japan. I used to have Szigeti's recording of the Brahms Horn Trio (with John Barrows and Mieczyslaw Horszowski) and Violin Sonata No. 2 in my vinyl days. Szigeti's playing was indeed pretty wobbly on this album (as well as in his Mercury albums fo the Beethoven and Brahms Violin Concertos with Dorati and Menges respectively), but I still might have some geezer nostalgia to hear these performances again.

p.p.s.: Mea culpa, I have referred to all the composers by their last names only in this post, which I was advised (see my previous post on this subject) is a practice which is exclusionary, racist and sexist. As you read this post, just pretend that, where I typed "Mozart", you're reading "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart"! That will help my conscience a lot!

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 RE: Finally! Some more of the missing Mercury Living Presence performances. . . - bald2 14:49:53 11/12/20 (1)
 Thanks SO much, Harry - That's great information! [nt] - Chris from Lafayette 10:18:10 11/19/20 (0)
 RE: Finally! Some more of the missing Mercury Living Presence performances. . . - pbarach 04:29:35 11/10/20 (1)

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 RE: Finally! Some more of the missing Mercury Living Presence performances. . . - bald2 14:49:53 11/12/20 (1)
 Thanks SO much, Harry - That's great information! [nt] - Chris from Lafayette 10:18:10 11/19/20 (0)
 RE: Finally! Some more of the missing Mercury Living Presence performances. . . - pbarach 04:29:35 11/10/20 (1)
 Listened to most of them yesterday - SO good! [nt] - Chris from Lafayette 09:05:05 11/10/20 (0)
 Cool!!! - popsy 15:19:32 11/09/20 (0)