This is the fifth installment of the SWR CLASSIC series dedicated to Hans Rosbaud. It contains on nine albums works by W. A. Mozart -...

This is the fifth installment of the SWR CLASSIC series dedicated to Hans Rosbaud. It contains on nine albums works by W. A. Mozart - a representative selection of the solo concertos, symphonies, serenades and fortunately also the rarely recorded concert arias. Rosbaud is an expert at presenting Mozart's charming and instantaneously fascinating melodics without trivialization and exaggerated sentiment. Hans Rosbaud was an undemonstrative conductor. Bernard Haitink has recalled that ‘…as he approached the podium you thought, surely that can’t be the conductor’, yet he achieved excellent results. As the Chicago-based critic Robert C. Marsh commented in a review of Rosbaud’s first concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in January 1959, ‘This modest, self-effacing conductor has authority, an ear for color and a sense of style. He is a musician to hear rather than watch... He seems to have the most naive idea of showmanship, but his musicianship cannot be questioned.’ The esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries was illustrated by the composer Francis Poulenc’s comment, quoted in Paris-Match in November 1954, that ‘The taste of music buffs little resembles that of professional musicians. Music buffs believe that the greatest living conductor is Toscanini; musicians know that it is Hans Rosbaud.’ And another major French composer, Pierre Boulez, regards Rosbaud as a model of what a conductor should be.