Last Saturday I attended a rehearsal during which Andre Previn muscled
the Munich Philharmonic through Dmitri Mitropouls's orchestra version
of Beethoven's string quartet No.  14 in c sharp minor.  I had never
experienced this piece before and was surprised how little it sounded
like Beethoven.  It left me wondering whether the sound was Mitropoulos.

I think the trouble was that the color a string orchestra simply can't
accomodate the demand for a very sharply chiselled sound in the piece's
address-and-response passages--something that in the true quartet version
two instruments ahve much less trouhble in doing.

Anyway, the fault was surely not with Previn who revealed himslef as
a no-nonsense conductor of the old (German) school, very demanding in
rehearsal and implacabale in determination.  Moreover, he expressed his
orders clearly in native-sounding (north-) German.  From the piano stool
he also conducted Mozart's piano concerto KV 491.  Excellent Zusammenspile
with the orchestra, despite a rather mechanical performance on the piano.

Denis Fodor