Boston Symphony Orchestra, James Levine - Mozart: Symphonies 14, 18, 20, 39 & 41 (2010)

What with the release of live performances with various ensembles, Big Jim Levine is receiving his due as an orchestral conductor. True, his cycle of Mozart Symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic from the `80s defies categorization. It's easy on the ear but one wonders whether it is a little too effortless. I suspect that Keats' "Beauty is Truth" paradigm is meretricious once again.
Here is more evidence to affirm Big Jim's stature: a selection of symphonies recorded live with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (and the sound is unbelievably good). Thrice Mozart wrote symphonies in A Major; of the trio, K 134 is an excursion to Cythera in its own right. Saint-Foix acclaimed K 130 as the first of his great symphonies. I don't disagree: the Salzburg Kid is out to make an impression. K 133 is a pocket-rocket; I never tire of its first movement; on Planet Mozart, it warrants a Ghent Altarpiece.
These are wonderful, life-affirming performances. Even if you are somewhat jaded by this repertoire (this is more of a reference to K 551), you'll be electrified by this music-making. By a wide margin, they're gutsier than their counterparts from the DG cycle: there is no soup. Minuets never drag. Woodwind cut through textures as they should. Big Jim's pacing is infallible (the climax in K 133 /1 is the stuff of legends). And what strings are in play! I can understand why reviewers lament the decline and fall of this orchestra if these performances were once the norm. Mozart's antiphony between the first and second violins is also broadcast joyously (K 130 /1). All and sundry bet the house in the great E Flat, K 543, and the Jupiter - no-wonder the audience, hitherto unheard, goes nuts at the end.