Mozart
Sir Georg Solti’s second Decca recording of Don Giovanni recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall in London in 1996. “It has many virtues: it is as finely disciplined as any other Solti performance, the orchestral playing is excellent and the rhythms are crisp, strong and taughtly held. There is a sense of spaciousness to the direction that is unusual these days… I found Renée Fleming an impressive Donna Anna: a big voice, but with a youthful tinge, considerable warmth and fullness of tone, and a hint of vulnerability… Elvira is sharply drawn by Ann Murray: a very aware, alive performance, sung with considerable intensity. Bryn Terfel… now moves on to Giovanni. It is a splendidly sturdy, virile reading, large in scale, and done with enormous vitality (a truly brilliant Champagne Aria). He goes to his doom with splendid defiance.Herbert Lippert sings Ottavio with delicacy and softness and sensitive shading and with hints of passion too; he is surely one of the most eloquent Mozart tenors around these days. If you want a direct, serious, well-recorded performance that takes the work seriously and has a good modern cast, this version demands to be considered… this is certainly a performance to command respect.” Gramophone