 Décédé en 2010, Otmar Suitner reste assez peu connu chez nous du fait d’une carrière menée principalement à l’Est : Dresde (où il dirigea la Staatskapelle au début des années 60) et Berlin (au futur Staatsoper avant Barenboim). Parce qu’il avait appris de Clemens Krauss et enseigné la direction d’orchestre au Mozarteum de Salzbourg, on pouvait attendre beaucoup de son Mozart. A nouveau rééditées (à partir d’originaux remastérisés cette fois mais sans la "Jupiter"), ses KV 543 et 550 (deuxième mouture, avec clarinettes) se montrent bien classiques : équilibre au profit des cordes, manières un peu démodées (le placement des "petites notes"), suppression impardonnable de nos jours des reprises des mouvements finaux, et surtout lenteur excessive de l’adagio introductif de la 39ème (c’est un alla breve : le bon tempo, qui fait percevoir la pulsation des deux blanches, est celui d’Harnoncourt !)… Enregistrée 6 mois plus tard, l’inusable 40ème est plus verte et allante, sans le côté soyeux qu’une prise de son plutôt globale donnait à la 39ème, et avec quelques tripatouillages d’ingénieur du son (les altos du final ?). Le tout, très différent des enregistrements de Krips contemporains, intéressera surtout les mozartiens curieux et les collectionneurs soucieux d’exhaustivité. (Olivier Eterradossi) Most of Suitner’s Mozart recordings with the Dresden Staatskapelle were made after his time as conductor there had come to an end, in the summer of 1964, when he moved to direct the State Opera in Berlin, where he was offered better working conditions. “I have been in charge of many recordings, and the execution was seldom so smooth. It was all so relaxed and easy-going. We always felt the joy of music-making,” producer Heinz Wegner remembers. At the same time, Suitner’s Mozart was stylistically anything but arbitrary: “He naturally had a concept and he knew how to implement it, so that his interpretations – as if influenced by some enigmatic powers – always generated a specially ‘natural’ listening experience. I never experienced that in Mozart with any other conductor.” Otmar Suitner’s great success as Principal Conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden remains a fascinating phenomenon to this day. That said, the cultural, political and economic work environment of this orchestra, so steeped in tradition, was far from auspicious, which meant that the qualities of the new man on the rostrum and his musicians faced more than the usual challenges. Seldom has a young conductor fulfilled expectations of him in such a brilliant manner. When, in 1960 at just 38 years of age, he took up his new post, few people would have believed that fifty years later memories would still regularly be re-awakened of his Mozart recordings. Producer Heinz Wegner explains: “What we hear on this recording seemed to emerge as if by magic. When he conducted Mozart, something seemed to happen to the music to the extent that it just seemed he had captured the quintessence of the composer.”
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