Symphonies Nos 3 & 5 (recorded 1957 & 1960)

"In all these pieces Mitropoulos is skilled in balancing the structural aspects of the music with its dramatic, expressive side. All provide further evidence, if any were needed, of this great conductor's total absorption in music-making, and fully justify the high reputation he enjoys today."
(MusicWeb Oct 2007)

Dmitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960) was born in Athens to a family with strong ecclesiastical connections. He showed very soon that he was a musical prodigy, both in piano technique and still more remarkably in memorizing complex musical scores. He composed early on but Busoni persuaded him to give that up. He was a repetiteur in Berlin under Erich Kleiber, then moved to Athens as a conductor and in 1936 was invited by Koussevitzky to Boston. After a sensational debut, for the rest of his career he was based in the USA becoming conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1937, his happiest years. He was then made chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic from 1949 to 1957 where he encountered much criticism for his over enthusiastic inclusion of contemporary scores. At the same time, he started conducting some highly successful productions at the Metropolitan Opera, New York and also in Italy at La Scala. He regularly conducted at the major European Festivals with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras but his health deteriorated rapidly during the late 1950s and he died conducting Mahler's Symphony No.3 in Milan with the La Scala Orchestra in November 1960.

Mitropoulos was an early pioneer of the Mendelssohn symphonies notably in the US where they were hardly ever played and recorded both of them in the studio for Sony in 1952 with the New York Philharmonic but these have not been available for many years. These live recordings from 1957 and 1960 taken from the ORIGINAL WDR MASTER TAPES show Mitropoulos relaxed and at his best. The sound, like all the WDR transfers, is suitably brilliant and detailed.

All three works, including the very rare Couperin arranged Milhaud work Die Sultanin (an addition to Mitropoulos's discography) have never been issued before in authorized editions.

Mitropoulos made a number of important broadcasts for WDR (Strauss, Mahler, Berlioz and Debussy) and these will be issued on Medici Masters in due course.