It's good news that EMI have taken over the old Pye/Nixa catalogue and here is the first evidence of that company's skill in further remastering recordings from the early days of stereo (1957 and 1959). However, an additional credit must go to Michael Dutton who supervised the initial digital transfers. These Dvorak recordings were notable in their previous stereo LP incarnations for a fuzzy, gritty treble response. This has now, partly by a degree of limitation in the upper range, been successfully cleaned up, yet at the same time the Manchester Free Trade Hall ambience has been fully retained. The result is convincingly full-bodied, and one can now listen to these marvellously invigorating performances without technical distraction.
Barbirolli's finest recordings were like inspired live performances. Although his feeling for an overall symphonic structure was instinctively sound, he could create sudden incandescent bursts of musical energy, and the surge of adrenalin in the coda of the first movement of the Seventh Symphony is electrifying. The finale, too, has a compulsive onward sweep. Yet the singing lyricism of wind and strings alike, both in the secondary material of the opening movement, and the Adagio, with its melting melodic flow, is constantly permeated with natural Dvorakian feeling. Characteristically, the Scherzo begins coaxingly, yet soon generates a contagious rhythmic incisiveness and lift.
If anything the New World is even more memorable. Barbirolli's directness here is disarming: he eases in the second subject of the first movement with hardly any adjustment of tempo, and the allegro unfolds straightforwardly, but with increasing drama, until another great burst of power leads to an exuberant coda. The Largo has a serene simplicity, with each episode sustained with unaffected beauty, then the vivacious Scherzo takes off buoyantly and brings some delightful rustic effects with the trills in the Trio. The finale makes a thrilling apotheosis, again surging to a rivetingly brilliant close, after Barbirolli has looked back with the composer over his earlier ideas in the most affectionate way. It is altogether a remarkably vivid interpretation; intensely personal in its commitment and concern for detail, but never idiosyncratic in any linear distortion.
This generous and inexpensive coupling is surely a must for all Dvorakians and admirers of our second greatest British conductor, whose Italian ancestry always added an extra dimension to his music-making. He lived and worked for the most part in northern climes, but the influence of the South was never far away (and I don't mean the south of England!).'