Catchgroove’s Musical Memoir: Mozart 40th and 41st Symphonies – Berlin Philharmonic (Karl Böhm) Deutsche Grammophon

This is a new feature on the blog: a memoir focused on music that shaped me. Here is the first installment of Catchgroove’s Musical Memoir.

The first piece of recorded music I ever owned was a cassette of Mozart’s 40th and 41st symphonies. I am not sure how I came to be aware of No. 40 (40 was the goal of the acquisition and 41 was merely a bonus B-side for me). I assume I discovered it on local public radio’s classical programming which I listened to regularly as a kid. My parents were not into classical music, this was my own discovery (I will get into my parents’ musical influence on me in a future post).

I am unsure when I acquired the cassette, but I would guess around 1968. I had recently received the ubiquitous Panasonic portable cassette player/recorder of the day that looked something like this:

I didn’t have any tapes for this new “toy” so I bought the Mozart tape at Schmidt Music in downtown Minneapolis with my mom (who worked around the corner at the Young Quinlan department store). I was learning to play the flute at the time, and Schmidt was the go-to Minneapolis music store for instruments, sheet music, and classical recordings.

I was not particularly musically sophisticated as a kid, No. 40 just struck a chord in my young mind. I dug the big dynamics (the swells from quiet to loud). I can’t imagine there was great audio quality coming from that small portable device, but I didn’t know any better. The melodies were memorable and hummable. I liked big bands and this was a very big band – an orchestra! Listening to it now it sounds like a stern conversation between an adult and a playful child. It shifted between dark and light. It was moody. It was a long “song” (about a half hour) made up of four parts (movements). It was like a movie. The only other symphony I was aware of was Beethoven’s 5th (which was the symphony most people were aware of). I found the No. 40 way cooler and relished that Beethoven was influenced by No. 40 – Beethoven’s 5th third movement begins with a pitch sequence similar to that of Mozart’s 40th finale.

I played that tape over and over and stared at the mysterious man on the cover: Karl Böhm. What was he gazing at? I loved the Deutsche Grammophon logo – it demanded: “Take this music seriously!” I don’t recall owning any additional prerecorded music at the time (I did record stuff off the radio) and so I played this tape to death.

The original acquisition was for No. 40, but what a bonus it was that No. 41 (nicknamed Jupiter) was the B-side. It is the longest and last symphony that Mozart composed. It is regarded by many critics as one of the greatest symphonies in classical music. I fell in love with it too.

As a kid, I was ambivalent about popular music. I wasn’t a snob, I was genuinely uninterested. I didn’t listen to top-40 radio. However, in the monoculture of the ’60s and ’70s, it was impossible to not know pop tunes. I enjoyed playing popular tunes of the day on the flute (the flute will be another chapter in the memoir). I had a popular music flute songbook and I preferred that to my A.C. Petersen method book (see below) as I could cheat on sight reading with pop songs as I could play them by ear and the sheet music was merely a rough guide. I was mediocre at sight reading, but I had a hell of an ear.

I didn’t think of myself as particularly different from other kids when it came to music even though they were into 7-inch singles of pop hits of the day. I was just attracted to the classical music played on public radio, the elevator music on WAYL (the Twin Cities easy listening radio station), and the big band music played on Hobbs’ House late at night on WCCO (the most powerful and successful radio station in the upper Midwest). It wasn’t until I entered Junior High (1971) that I realized that listening to classical music and playing the flute (as a male) was weird (I also did gymnastics and figure skating).

I haven’t listened to the Mozart cassette in probably 50 years, but I found that same recording on streaming services (it is buried in the compilation below on Spotify). Listening to it now via steaming brings back great memories! It still moves me. Playing it LOUD on the big boy stereo (see Desert Sessions rig below) helps too!

If you are interested in hearing my cassette, the same recording is buried in this compilation on Spotify.

My preferred streaming version is on Tidal (CD quality – 16 bit 44.1 kHz FLAC): https://tidal.com/album/4454146