The Decca Ansermet
Legacy, now firmly established with Australian Eloquence,
is something of a trip down memory lane. These performances
or their mono predecessors provided my introduction to much
of the repertoire. Such was the case with the Mussorgsky/Ravel
Pictures
from an Exhibition which I
reviewed recently
and such was also the case with Glazunov’s ballet
The
Seasons. Is nostalgia enough to justify their reissue
now, or can these performances still be competitive in today’s
market? In one respect they clearly are competitive, since
this super-budget double CD set is offered for much less
than most single-CD competitors.
As far as
The
Seasons is concerned, I believe that this Ansermet
recording can hold its own against the current competition.
The Suisse Romande may not have been one of the world’s
leading orchestras but they always played well and idiomatically
for Ansermet and there are very few rough edges here. Ansermet
always had quite a way with Russian music and he makes
a strong case for Glazunov’s colourful ballet. His version
of Stravinsky’s
Firebird became a classic: perhaps
Eloquence will reissue his recording of this, currently
on Double Decca 443 467 2
The main competition
comes from Naxos, who have three budget-price versions of
The
Seasons: Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra/Lenard
(8.550079, with five excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s
Sleeping
Beauty), Moscow Symphony Orchestra/Anissimov on 8.553915
(with
Scènes de Ballet, etc., a three-star version
for Rob Barnett – see
review)
and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra/Kolchinsky
on 8.554049 (with Ilya Kaler in the Violin Concerto). The
oldest of these, the Lenard, has provided me with very serviceable
accounts of both works for some time and the recording is
more than adequate. The Tchaikovsky coupling is just right
for those occasions when I don’t want to listen to the complete
ballet.
Good as the Lenard
is, I marginally prefer Ansermet, partly, but not solely,
because of his generally slightly livelier tempi. Only in
Spring do his blossoms take a little longer, by a mere 7
seconds. The Suisse Romande Orchestra give their regular
conductor several little telling extras, too, such as the
beautifully smoochy syncopations which they achieve in
Autumn and
the whole ballet is rounded off in fine style in the Scene
and Apotheosis at the end of this movement. This is music
to wallow in, ‘played with point and affection’, as one 1967
reviewer aptly put it.
Decca still offer
this Ansermet version in their Legends series, coupled with
Khachaturian conducting his own ballet music, surely uncompetitive
for
The Seasons when the single CD costs more than
this Eloquence 2-CD set. Another Decca 2-CD set is more competitive:
Ashkenazy conducts
The Seasons plus Prokofiev’s
Cinderella on
455 349 2. If you don’t already have a version of the Prokofiev,
this would probably be most people’s first choice. If you’re
happy with excerpts from Ashkenazy’s
Cinderella, however,
you may prefer the Eloquence super-budget coupling of these
with excerpts from Solti’s
Romeo and Juliet on 467
4592.
The ongoing Serebrier
series of the Glazunov Symphonies for Warner couples
The
Seasons with the Fifth Symphony: Raymond Walker thought
the performance sensitive and appealing (2564 61434-2
- see
review).
If you’re collecting this series you could do much worse,
though I’m happy to stay with the
Chandos-Polyansky versions
of the Symphonies. Järvi couples
The Seasons with
the
Violin Concerto on Chandos CHAN8596: it’s not
one of my favourites in this fine series, with
Spring sounding
a little rushed and
Autumn slightly too lethargic.
I know that’s how we tend to think of these two seasons,
but Lenard and Ansermet sound more appropriate in
Spring:
Polyansky opens at a flowing tempo but gets a little too
fast and
Autumn drags ever so slightly from the start.
If you want to hear this series at its best, try the Eighth
Symphony and
Commemorative Cantata on
CHAN9961.
Couplings will
decide the issue for many. For approximately the price of
the single Naxos CD, Eloquence offer three times as much
music. CD1 is rounded off with the attractive, almost Straussian,
Concert
Waltzes, well performed and recorded at the same time
as
The Seasons, which makes them among the most recent
on the two CDs – ADD, but all these 1966 recordings still
sound fine. Then comes the Glazunov-Rimsky-Liadov-Tcherepnin
ballet arrangement of Schumann’s
Carnaval. This kind
of pastiche ballet may be less in vogue now than in 1959
but it’s still attractive to hear and sounding even better
than when I last encountered it on the Ace of Diamonds LP
label, though that reissue was regarded as something of a
demonstration recording in its day.
Ansermet also
conducted this arrangement of Schumann’s
Carnaval with
the Royal Opera House Orchestra, a performance reissued on
a recent Eloquence 2-CD set,
Royal Ballet Gala (442
9986). Rob Maynard’s only complaint was the rather short
playing time of this set – see
review – but
this is offset by the attractive price; otherwise the Covent
Garden Orchestra offer rather more polished performances
than the Suisse Romande. Performance and recording of
Carnaval on
the Swiss set sound just a little overblown.
The oldest of
these recordings, of
Stenka Razin,
Kikimora and
the
Chants Populairs on CD2, date from 1954. Some
Decca and RCA recordings of this early-stereo vintage still
sound amazingly good but the sound of
Stenka Razin in
particular is badly dated, boomy and unfocused.
Kikimora doesn’t
sound too bad, nor do the
Chants Populairs, which
are welcome because they are receiving their first outing
on CD; indeed, I don’t think these attractive performances
have any rival in the current catalogue. I hadn’t heard this
music before and, while I might not have recognised it as
the work of Liadov, it is unmistakably Russian in character.
In fact, all the
shorter pieces on CD2 receive idiomatic performances and,
while the recording varies according to its vintage, 1954
to 1964, it’s all more than adequate apart from
Stenka
Razin which, in any case, would not be my major reason
for acquiring this set – Shostakovich’s
Execution of Stepan
Razin may be an altogether tougher work to get to know
but the music is head and shoulders over Glazunov’s representation
of this folk-hero, despite the latter’s evocation of the
Volga Boatmen’s Song.
With colourful
presentation and very adequate notes from Colin Anderson,
these two well-filled discs should and, I’m sure, will certainly
find a ready market at their very reasonable price. Bearing
in mind that SXL6269, coupling just
The Seasons and
the
Concert Waltzes, cost 37/9 in 1967, the equivalent
of at least £35 in modern currency, the reissue certainly
is very good value.
Brian Wilson