How one thing leads to another. If you like this you might like
that. So it has come about that two boxes from Nimbus have come
to attention and reappraisal. It all started with the
Lill/Otaka
Nimbus set of the Rachmaninov piano concertos which included
some other things. I was very impressed pretty much all-round
and so was John Quinn. Otaka's BBC Welsh Orchestra sounded stunning
and idiomatically Russian in the grandest of traditions. Could
his approach to the symphonies be of similar standing and were
these works as wondrously recorded by the Nimbus team? Nimbus
were good enough to provide a review copy.
The First Symphony has a healthy Slavonic weight shot through
with characteristic tragic blackness. The solo winds are good
and reminiscent of Glazunov – Otaka recorded a complete Glazunov
symphony cycle for
Bis.
The atmosphere of the Brangwyn Hall is fully captured with every
metallic rattle and string-lofted swoon rendered in full. The
gong-stroke at the end of movement I resonates into silence. Otaka
keeps a hold on propulsion with fine backward and forward tempo
changes. There’s a whiplash finale to cap things off – a glorious
ruckus.
It’s a shame that we get only four of the five Respighi-orchestrated
Etudes-Tableaux which I first heard in a recording conducted
by the otherwise unknown Yuri Krasnopolsky with the New Philharmonia.
These range in mood across lingering languor to contemplative
lulling and lapping to abrasive vigour and tragedy (II and IV)
all with a Hollywood gleam. I wonder what Bax or Respighi would
have made of the Medtner ballades had he been moved to orchestrate
them?
The Second Symphony has a shattering impact. This is a great recording
that swells to fill the Brangwyn Hall. There’s a real Russian
swell to the sound in II. The feminine solo woodwind are accentuated
against the masculine swathes of string sound which are almost
suffocating in their
pesante density. At 8.15 the solo
violin vibrant and fibrous. Such intimate moments contrast with
the jubilant roar and swoon of the finale. Rozhdestvensky and
the LSO on
Regis
are magnificent as in their different ways are Cura (
Avie),
Sanderling (
Warner),
Svetlanov (
Melodiya)
and the classic starry Previn with the LSO (
EMI).
Otaka is in the same league. There's a touchingly sensitive
Vocalise
to finish CD 2: quietude personified and lovingly paced.
I rather regret the absence of a
Symphonic Dances from
Otaka however his musing
Isle of the Dead passes in one
epic sustained groan and sigh. The Third Symphony is most transparently
recorded which helps in a work that has more than a few moments
of delicacy. It is more thoughtful and less impulsive than the
other two: the years that bring the philosophic mind? In this
sense it differs from the late-ish Fourth Piano Concerto. Svetlanov’s
1962
Melodiya
recording with the USSRSO was truly exciting and pips this to
the post. That said, this has much going for it in its pensive
yet not unexciting way. In III at 10.51 Otaka holds back on the
effervescence although at 12:12 he blitzes his way through the
final gallop.
There are typically good English only liner-notes from composer
John Pickard just as there were for the piano concertos box.
That the project had funding from Hitachi Maxell is a reminder
of how recorded media have moved on from the days of the audio
cassette.
Just one final curio point: These three discs and the three comprising
the Piano Concertos were issued by Nimbus in 1999 in a single
large box as NI 1761 [nla].
A very strong contender indeed and something of a Cinderella in
the crowded annals of Rachmaninov symphony cycles.
Rob Barnett
BBC NOW / Otaka 
