I’m afraid this is
a short review, as I can’t honestly
say I would recommend anyone to spend
their hard-earned cash on this Russian
double-album. This is some of the most
frequently recorded repertoire to be
found, and the competition is fierce:
Mravinsky, Sinopoli, Karajan and Furtwängler
have all produced classic recordings,
while Pletnev’s comparatively recent
Pathétique with the Russian
National Orchestra is equally superb.
Amid such company, this one’s a non-starter.
The trouble really
lies with the conducting, and my worries
began very near the start of CD1 where
the moody theme in the strings is presented
with a kind of mechanical rubato that
has the melody and its brass accompaniment
in two completely different tempi. The
Fourth Symphony suffers all the way
through from the sort of wilful driving
of the music that leaves the poor orchestral
players struggling in the conductor’s
wake. Pity the solo oboist in the slow
movement, trying to introduce some flexibility
into his phrasing – no, Vakhtang Jordania
just sweeps on regardless. Clarinet
theme in the first movement’s second
subject? Virtually inaudible behind
a deafening string accompaniment. These
balance problems pervade all the performances,
the most farcical being the woodwind
presentation of the love theme in Romeo
and Juliet, totally drowned out
by the counter-melody in first horn.
Things are not helped
by a weirdly idiosyncratic recording;
microphones are placed so close to the
front desks of the strings that you
can usually hear the leader’s tone as
quite separate from the other fiddles,
while any ’cello passages are made to
sound like solos, as only the principal
can be heard. Unfortunately for him,
Jordania can’t escape the blame for
this either, as he is named as the recording’s
‘Executive Producer’.
It’s very sad, because
the orchestral playing, or what you
can hear of it, suggests that this orchestra
might be capable of half decent readings
under sympathetic and musical guidance.
Alas, they don’t get it this time.
Gwyn Parry-Jones