MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger



Purchase from Buywell.com

 

Nicolai RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908)
CD 1 [75:04]
Antar – Symphonic Suite, Op. 9 [30:44]
May Night – Overture [8:04] The Tale of Tsar Saltan – Suite, Op. 57 [20:27] (The Tsar’s Departure and Farewell; The Tsarina and her son afloat in the cask; The Three Wonders; The Flight of the Bumblebee - The Tale of Tsar Saltan)
Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 34 [15:16]
CD 2 [66:42]
Russian Easter Festival Overture, Op. 36 [14:40]
Christmas Eve – Suite [23:42]
Dubinushka, Op. 62 [4:12]
Sadko – A Musical Picture, Op. 5 [10:51]
The Snow Maiden – Suite (Introduction; Danses des Oiseaux; Cortège; Danses des Bouffons) [12:36]
Motet de Genève/Jacques Horneffer (Snow Maiden)
L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Ernest Ansermet
rec. Victoria Hall, Geneva, Switzerland, October 1952 (Capriccio Espagnol, mono); June 1954 (Antar); November 1956 (May Night, Tale of Tsar Saltan, Russian Easter Festival Overture); April 1957 (Flight of the Bumblebee, Sadko); May 1957 (Christmas Eve, Dubinushka); November 1957 (Snow Maiden). ADD.
DECCA ELOQUENCE 480 0827 [75:04 + 66:42]
 
Nicolai RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908)
Sheherazade Op. 35 [41:40]
Le Coq d’Or – Suite (King Dodon in his Palace 9:15; King Dodon on the Battlefield 4:29; King Dodon with Queen Shemakha 6:41; Marriage Feast and Lamentable End of King Dodon 6:32)
Pierre Nerini (violin)
Paris Conservatoire Orchestra/Ernest Ansermet 1-4
L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Ernest Ansermet
rec. La Maison de la Mutualité, Paris, France, September 1954 (Sheherazade); Victoria Hall, Geneva, Switzerland, October 1952 (Le Coq d’Or, mono). ADD
DECCA ELOQUENCE 480 0081 [68:58]
Experience Classicsonline



 

Heard beside recordings by Golovanov (Boheme, 1950s original) and Svetlanov this Ansermet Sheherazade is softly lit and softly focused. If you find the Soviets just a shade too relentless and neon then this might be for you. It's undoubtedly effective and Ansermet even coaxes a nice bray from the Paris Conservatoire brass or perhaps it was endemic in those days. Nerini is a very neat soloist but does not have the extraordinary seductive and scudding glamour of Oistrakh for Golovanov. The recording from 1954 is very good and way better than the ancient sounding Golovanov. Even so its steely core is beginning to show through. For a modern recording try Reference Recordings’ superb version with the gifted Jose Serebrier.

The recording of the Coq d'Or suite is even older and this shows in the exposed trumpet solo that opens this fairy tale piece with its occasional reminiscences/predictions of Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto. The woodwind playing in the Battlefield movement bristles with character; indeed this is a classic version in which Ansermet can be heard with his usual orchestra the Suisse Romande. A fine interpretation and much more treasurable than this Sheherazade.  In the finale and elsewhere one can see where the Stravinsky of The Firebird and the Symphony in E flat found their influences.

The two CD set is packed tight with the rest of Ansermet's Rimsky legacy. His Antar is magnificently recorded as the tolling drumbeat in the first movement testifies - deeply impressive. On the other hand, as an interpretation, while very fine in its own right it is up against Svetlanov and the USSRSO who make the whole score sing and sway more seductively. Listen for example to the way Svetlanov handles the humming tension of the second movement and the exuberant middle eastern fair of the third. Ansermet is very good but not a match for the volcanic Russian. There's a charming yet understated May Night overture to match up with a rather engaging Tsar Saltan suite the march of which must surely have formed a model for Prokofiev's march in The Love of Three Oranges.    Also from 1958 comes the splendidly balanced Flight of the Bumble Bee. The Capriccio Espagnol is nice to have but shows its age (1952) in stridency. Also the orchestra's skills cannot match those in the first league. In the Capriccio I think particularly of the finer recording by Ormandy and the Philadelphia.

On the second CD is the Russian Easter Festival Overture but despite being most lovingly recorded Ansermet favours an overly steady approach the etiolated results of which have great charm but little bite. The Christmas Eve suite is magically done with some hushed and tense playing captured upfront in classically virile sound from Decca. A pity that the whole suite is presented in a single track. The Dubinushka is extremely nicely done: folk-cheery with some notably pointed trumpet work. It's an artefact of those same revolutionary times when Rimsky, at the cost of his job, sided with the students of the St Petersburg Conservatoire at the time of the ill-fated 1905 revolution.   Sadko is tempestuous and is superbly done here with - once again - recording to match. Ansermet provides a buzzing performance replete with slavonic melancholy and fairytale enchantment. Note the beguilingly lissom cantabile at 3.49 onwards. The musical picture is no longer than a concert overture and rises to a wild dance worthy of the Polovtsi though on this occasion sub-oceanic. The Snow Maiden suite is in four movements - all in a single track.  With its foreshadowing of Bax's Garden of Fand this is most magically done and the Danse des Oiseaux is finely picked out by a slightly distanced Motet de Genève choir who achieve a nicely authentic Russian accent recalling the celebratory sections of Rachmaninov's The Bells. The suite ends with the sparkling Danses des Bouffons with a dervish Tchaikovskian whirl to it.

Lower key Rimsky-Korsakov which may well suit you. It's often very nicely recorded.

 

Rob Barnett

 

 

 

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.