Fedoseyev’s Mahler
5 is a perfectly respectable one but
as with other releases from this series
that I’ve heard it’s rather let down
by the recording. The dry acoustic and
lack of warmth certainly act against
the playing and of more concern are
those moments of muffled percussion
and occlusion of string lines. This
is the case throughout but of concern
in the first movement where cello and
viola lines become muffled and sometimes
indistinct. Otherwise the performance
is marked by a certain degree of briskness.
The opening trumpet statement is formal,
straight, clean limbed and unheroic
and the curve of the music generally
is untouched by much incipient tragedy.
There are moments in the opening movement
as well when tension fractionally slackens;
the grip and the rise and crest of the
greatest performances are somewhat missing
here. Nevertheless there are fine things,
not least sectional discipline in this
live performance culled from what were
apparently three performances (or maybe
live performances augmented by patching
– the notes aren’t quite clear).
In the second movement
Fedoseyev tends to cultivate a rather
bleaker sonority than, say, Kubelík;
the Russian performance is commensurately
lither though the orchestral sound is
less complex – the acoustic perspective
is flattened and clarinets and triangle
sometimes equally audible. In the Scherzo,
where Kubelík was inclined rather
to italicise the opening horn call,
Fedoseyev replicates the clarity and
sang froid of the opening of the work
whilst in general he tends to lack the
Czech conductor’s evocative verdancy
or vivacity, even given that this wasn’t
necessarily the most consistently inspired
recording from Kubelík’s cycle.
And despite the obvious excitement of
the work’s end and the technical prowess
of the orchestra, the Adagietto is dry-eyed
(though certainly not over brisk) and
the impression as a whole one of a certain
restraint. As such it clearly represents
a more austere approach, but its relative
coolness is hindered by the recording.
Jonathan Woolf
Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio/Vladimir
Fedoseyev 