Any conductor whose transformative experience was hearing Reger's Mozart Variations is obviously a conductor in a million. Likewise an orchestra whose calling card is Reger's Mozart Variations and whose principal conductors' have always made a specialty of the work is obviously an orchestra in a million. And yet here is Herbert Blomstedt with his beloved Dresden Staatskapelle performing Reger's Mozart Variations as if the work weren't thick, turgid, and torpid, but rather warmly lyrical, radiantly colorful, and deeply ...
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Any conductor whose transformative experience was hearing Reger's Mozart Variations is obviously a conductor in a million. Likewise an orchestra whose calling card is Reger's Mozart Variations and whose principal conductors' have always made a specialty of the work is obviously an orchestra in a million. And yet here is Herbert Blomstedt with his beloved Dresden Staatskapelle performing Reger's Mozart Variations as if the work weren't thick, turgid, and torpid, but rather warmly lyrical, radiantly colorful, and deeply soulful. And beyond all hope, they completely succeed in transforming the listener's appreciation of this much maligned masterpiece. No matter how many fat and sloppy or scrawny and scrappy performances of the work one has heard in the past, Blomstedt and the Staatskapelle turn in a supple and shapely performance culminating in a graceful fugue that blows them all off the shelf. For Reger's Mozart Variations alone, this disc would be worth getting. But that's not the end of the marvels on...
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