Symphony no.3 in B minor Il’ya Muromets (1911) [71:40]
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra/JoAnn Falletta
rec. 3-5 May 2013, Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, New York
NAXOS 8.573161 [71:40]
Size does matter - and that’s especially the case
in music. Just the sheer scale of some compositions can present
challenges. Sometimes those challenges are not so much artistic
as simply logistical. In the mid 19th century, Louis
Moreau Gottschalk was famous for organising “monster”
concerts of his own rambunctious scores through Central and South
America and the Caribbean. “My orchestra consisted”,
he wrote of one Havana event, “of six hundred and fifty performers,
[in addition to] eighty-seven choristers, fifteen solo singers,
fifty drums and eighty trumpets - that is to say, nearly nine hundred
persons bellowing and blowing to see who could scream the loudest.
The violins alone were seventy in number, counter-basso eleven,
violoncellos eleven! You can judge of the effect…”
As Gottschalk clearly implies, he was composing scores that could
be performed relatively easily by massed amateur and minimally rehearsed
forces. As a result, it seems fair to assume that he would have
been compelled to modify at least some of any higher artistic aspirations
that he may have entertained. Thus, although Stokowski or perhaps
even Toscanini - both noted explorers of forgotten byways of American
musical history - might have been tempted, I’m not aware that
it ever crossed the minds of the likes of Karajan, Abbado or Günter
Wand to perform A night in the tropics, Á Montevideo
or the Grande fantaisie triomphale sur l’hymne national
brésilien.
When, however, Late-Romantic composers began to use sheer orchestral
size as an entirely legitimate tool to help them express their personal
Weltanschauung, the jumbo score - requiring, this time, accomplished
performers rather than mere bellowers and blowers - acquired genuine
artistic credibility. Il’ya Muromets is one of those
great Late-Romantic orchestral leviathans. Like Strauss’s
Alpine symphony or Mahler’s Symphony of a thousand,
its epic scale and its practical requirements deter most orchestras
from even attempting it. Whereas a quick trawl through YouTube will
uncover plenty of orchestras from around the world perpetrating
all sorts of entertainingly horrific massacres on familiar scores,
I cannot locate a single one attempting even a portion of Il’ya.
Thankfully, though, several professional orchestras have, over the
years, risen to the challenge of recording Gliere’s third
symphony in greater or lesser degrees of completeness. Sadly, we
have, as far as I know, no surviving account led by the composer
himself. In the late 1940s and early 1950s Gliere certainly ventured
into the studio to record his own music on several occasions. As
a result, we can still hear his idiomatic and gripping accounts
of both the first (Consonance 80-3001) and second symphonies (Consonance
80-3002) in the glaringly abrasive - but strangely appropriate -
sound favoured by Soviet engineers at the time. Other accounts that
I have on my own shelves include: Leopold Stokowski conducting the
Houston Symphony Orchestra in 1957 (EMI CDM 5 65074 2) - a winning
performance but one ruled out of further consideration by the decision
to jettison almost half the score, presumably so as to make the
(then) unfamiliar music more user-friendly; Natan Rakhlin’s
slightly pruned account with the USSR Radio and TV Large Symphony
Orchestra, recorded in 1974 (Russian Disc RD CD 15 025); a well-regarded
version recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Harold
Farberman in 1978 (Unicorn-Kanchana UKCD2014/15, subsequently reissued
by Alto and reviewed
here); two accounts set down in 1991 - the first from Donald
Johanos with the Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava)
(Marco Polo 8.223358) and the second from Sir Edward Downes and
the BBC Philharmonic (Chandos CHAN 9041 - subsequently reviewed
as part of a reissued box set here
and here);
a 1994 recording by the State Symphony Orchestra under Igor Golovchin
(Russian Disc RD CD 11 358); and Leon Botstein’s with the
London Symphony Orchestra, dating from 2003 (Telarc CD-80609). Those
accounts are now joined by this new Naxos release, featuring the
increasingly well-regarded Buffalo Philharmonic under their charismatic
Music Director Jo-Ann Falletta.
Even when performed by professional orchestras, there is a real
danger that, notwithstanding Gliere’s accomplished orchestration,
such a dense, complex score can emerge as a congested, impenetrable
mass - especially if a conductor fails to balance his or her orchestral
forces effectively. The quality of the recorded sound therefore
takes on a special significance. In that respect, any new, technologically
up-to-date account like Ms Falletta’s ought to enjoy an advantage
over rivals that are almost all twenty years old or more. Revisiting
those past accounts for the purposes of this review, I was, however,
pleasantly surprised to find all of them more than acceptable. True
enough, Rakhlin’s recording boasts a generously reverberant
acoustic, but it is one that still leaves the orchestral detail
clear and might even be regarded as appropriate in such a glittering
score. Even Stokowski’s account, coming up for its 60th
birthday, entirely belies its age with the help of some judicious
digital restoration. Matters of recording quality are, then, of
rather less importance than one might have imagined, placing the
responsibility for achieving a satisfying performance fairly and
squarely on the shoulders of the artists themselves.
So how do Ms Falletta and her Buffalo players do? The first point
to note is that their interpretation is unlikely to come as too
much of a surprise to listeners familiar with any one of the previous
recordings, with the exceptions of Stokowski’s Il’ya-lite
and just two of the others. One of those rogue performances, notable
for a uniquely portentous opening movement that gives the music
a dramatically different character at that point, comes from Igor
Golovchin - closely associated with Evgeni Svetlanov and here leading
that maestro’s orchestra. The other is from Harold Farberman
and is characterised by exceptionally slow tempi, resulting
in by far the longest timing overall and necessitating a second
CD. Thus, whereas not only Ms Falletta but also Messrs. Rakhlin,
Johanos, Downes and Botstein all bring the first and second movements
in within quite narrow ranges - at anywhere from 21:24 to 22:53
and from 21:24 to 22:53 respectively - Farberman’s leisurely,
if not positively lethargic, timings are 28:28 and 28:44.
What does, however, confer great distinction on the new Naxos recording
is the immense care that the Buffalo orchestra and Ms Falletta lavish
on the score. Il’ya Muromets has, it appears, a special
significance for them, for we read in the booklet notes how, after
long preparation that culminated in a performance at Carnegie Hall,
the conductor has come to regard Gliere’s score as “an
adventure that changed our orchestra, strengthened us, and became
an artistic benchmark for our musicians … an unforgettable
journey.”
Perhaps the most obvious characteristic of this new performance
is its often relatively brisk tempi. Among all the “mainstream”
accounts (Rakhlin, Johanos, Downes, Botstein and herself), Ms Falletta
achieves the briskest timings in movements I - where her allegro
risoluto is second to none in its pronounced risoluto-ness
- and II. She achieves, moreover, if only just, the shortest Il’ya
Muromets timing overall. The great advantage of not over-indulging
the score’s slow sections is that they then blend far more
seamlessly with its upbeat elements. While some conductors appear
deliberately to emphasise sudden gear-changes that might have been
executed by a learner driver, Ms Falletta’s approach, in executing
smoother transitions of tempo, ensures that Il’ya comes
across as far less episodic. The lengthy andante sostenuto
introductory section of the first movement, for example, blends
seamlessly into the succeeding allegro risoluto at 07:30.
Similarly, in the final movement, where, what with its various depictions
of fierce battles, personal duels to the death, heavenly intonations
and human petrification, the potential for disjointed confusion
is most apparent, she skilfully and successfully pulls all the disparate
elements together.
Ms Falletta - aided by some fine engineering work - also proves
adept at keeping orchestral textures clear so that all sorts of
sometimes overlooked detail are revealed. In the first movement,
for instance, the attractive woodwinds chirruping away beneath the
strings can actually be heard (13:50-14:28). In the second, the
solo violin line (7:27-8:27) also emerges clearly into the light
of day. In the finale, she carefully ensures that the “chant
of the celestial army” is not so overpowering as to conceal
all the other variously conflicting themes that are being reprised
throughout the orchestra (11:21-12:28).
This new performance is also particular strong on mood. Strong dynamic
control exercised over the first movement’s introductory section
(00:00-07:30) ensures that it emerges as not merely a prelude to
the drama to come but as an atmospheric and integral part of it.
Falletta effectively conjures up, too, an appropriately desolate,
mysterious and supernatural picture of a dark, Slavic forest - far
darker than the more familiar “forest murmurs” of the
Rhineland - at the opening of the second movement. There she controls
the music-making so tightly and effectively that you can almost
see the Buffalo players hanging on her every gesture. After a short
third movement that is more of a simple (!) orchestral tour de
force, the highly atmospheric opening of the finale, full of
suggestively threatening musical intimations, once again demonstrates
the performers’ artistry. Its valedictory closing section
(17:28 onwards) provides a genuinely affecting conclusion.
What we have here, then, is an excellent performance that is enhanced
by its superb - and superbly balanced - sound-picture. Even without
the attractive Naxos price, it would be among the best recommendations
for a listener coming new to Gliere’s mammoth score. What
a shame, though, that we have, as far as I know, no recordings from
the likes of Svetlanov - rather surprisingly, in view of his stated
intention to record every Russian symphonic work that he could -
or that maverick genius Nikolai Golovanov. Is it too much to hope
that somewhere in a dusty Soviet radio archive, there might exist
that elusive recording by the composer himself? Now, that would
certainly be worth hearing.
Rob Maynard
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