Title: Slash and Burn
Product review: This live recording from 1939 repeats most of the features of Mengelberg's other Tchaikovsky Fifths, especially in the first and last movements: the finely-articulated clarinet introduction which anticipates the rhythmic motif of the first subjects in both movements; the intensity and control of forte passages; the slow-downs and accelerations for emotional impact; the unaccountable cuts in the last movement. But the symphony's not all there! The second movement begins half-way through, long after the famous horn solo, and lasts only six minutes. Whether the original lacquers were defective or missing or whether Dante/Lys goofed is unknown, but the omission is disastrous, and makes this CD one to avoid. It would be better to find the earlier studio Columbia recording of the Mengelberg Fifth on M & A or the later, better recorded studio Telefunken Mengelberg Fifth, also on Lys and which has all the virtues and none of the egregious defects of this issue.
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