Don Satz replied to my comment on the scarcity of revelatory recordings of
Mozart works:

>That's off the top of my head.  I can only assume that Felix does not care
>much for Mozart, or that his standards are "out of sight".

Probably the latter, as I certainly care a great deal for much of Mozart.
I know some of the recordings you mention above (I have to admit that
I probably have listened to only a fraction of the recordings you have
heard), and while I agree that many of them are very good indeed, I would
doubt whether they are 'revelatory' in the sense of giving a blinding flash
of understanding as to what the composer was about.  I was not saying that
most Mozart records are flat or lifeless - what I was trying to do was to
find records which are likely to speak to someone who does not as yet seem
to have much of a notion of what Mozart can express.  Once you have got a
first foothold in the music, so to speak, then a whole number of different
approaches, sometimes more subtle and restrained ones, will be able to give
just as much insight.  For instance, speaking on a completely different
musical level, I never thought that Rachmaninoff's 3rd piano concerto
made much sense as music until I heard the composer's own performance of
it:  so many passages suddenly 'clicked'.  But once I had got to know that
recording thoroughly, I became aware of its deficiencies and could see that
other recordings, while not as structurally cogent as Rachmaninoff's, were
nevertheless able to see many details in different and sometimes more
interesting ways.  How much more likely is that in Mozart!

Just one more specific point about my recommendations: you can see what I
mean in the concertos by Geza Anda.  I listened to K491 again yesterday and
did not like many things about it: certainly, I would never place it above
Curzon or Haskil.  However, the phrasing is sometimes more overt and the
rhetoric more pointed - it can change your mind if you think Mozart is
static or emotionally bland.  However, I very much stand by my other
recommendations as being of inspirational quality.

Felix Delbruck
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