Mozart is not the first composer one associates with Sir John Barbirolli, yet his name was never long absent from the conductor’s programmes. The G minor Symphony No.40 was in the very first programme Barbirolli conducted with the Hallé Orchestra – in the old Free Trade Hall, Manchester in January 1933 – and he chose the ‘Linz’ Symphony (No.36) for his first concert as conductor of the New York Philharmonic in November 1936. So the canard that in some way JB tried to avoid Mozart because the critics did not always approve of his interpretations is unjust: that in New York he chose a Mozart symphony for arguably the most crucial concert of his career is sufficient refutation in itself.

Barbirolli had conducted Mozart symphonies with his own chamber orchestra in the 1920s, when he first took up conducting, and it was then that he grew particularly fond of the Symphony No.29 in A. (In later years he invariably reduced the orchestra to near-chamber proportions for both Mozart and Haydn.) These Pye stereo recordings of the Symphony No.41 ‘Jupiter’ and Symphony No.29 were recorded in 1956 and the Overture to ‘Die Zauberflote’ in 1959 and have been digitally remastered by EMI.