Customer Reviews

Bizet: Carmen & L'Arlesienne Suites (CBS Masterworks Great Performances)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a must have for "Carmen", "L'Arlesienne" or Stokowski admirers.

As you know, this CD contains Bizet's most famous works and performances are excellent.

This record (of course, originally LP) was issued for celebrate that, Stokowski's 95th birthday and his 60th year in recording industry. And this is his one of the last recordings.

Carmen Suites are excellent and the performance of L'Arlesienne is very good, but I recommend one more recording of this work: Sir Thomas Beecham's recording with his Royal PO, released on EMI)...

Highly recommended

I don't know any other recordings of this particular music, so I base my opinions on what I hear. The music is incredible, the interpretation is as well, and the CD as a whole pleases. I've heard a lot about Leopold Stokowski. One thing I heard was that this was one of his greatest last recordings.

Although well-known, Leopold Stokowski for some reason never quite receives the respect that other famous conducting names garner. This is a shame, because at the top of his game Stokowski simply leaves his peers to shake their heads in wonderment at his ability to produce colors from an orchestra.

In these two pieces by Bizet Stokowski takes the long gone British National Philharmonic - created for recordings - and precedes to elicit playing quite as exciting as the best in these over-recorded selections. What distinquishes Stokowski's way in Bizet is his remarkable sensitivity, his light touch, effortlessly incorpoarted into a floating rythmic propulsion; all this decorated with lavish displays of instrumental colors.

As fine a piece of conducting as you can hope to hear in these works, a wonderful momento of this legendary leader at his best, and an absolute top choice for someone wishing to own this music on CD.

Probably one of the definitive recordings of the Carmen Suites. Full of energy and excitement, well read, and well played! Wonderful sonics, too.

The flaw: The opening cymbal crash in Suite No. 1 is slightly cut off on my CD. Unforgiveable if all CDs share this flaw. Otherwise, great!

I disagree with another reviewer about the L'Arlsienne Suites -- I found them excellent and I have no problem with their tempi.

Leopold Stokowski captures in this majuscule version, the tragedy, with no fussiness, the unsaid mirth of what means for the Spanish people this legendary tradition where the boundaries between life and death are so close.

On the other hand, there is no any other conductor capable to mirror with major elegance and sumptuous splendor, the Intermezzo and Les dragons d' Alcala.

Two only contenders in the sand: Sir Thomas Beecham and Paul Paray. So, in case you have the others two and this one, you may be not only rewarded but absolutely iron - clad.

When this first came out on LP, I thought: what is Stoky up to NOW?

In some ways I was pleasantly surprised because we get some of the best playing this ad hoc recording orchestra (not among the best) was able to muster.

Stoky's selection from Carmen is put together more-or-less to follow the opera's action. Of course, he can't resist some perverse reorchestration and the balances are out of whack here and there, but it's eminently listenable.

The L'Arlesienne music is more problematic for him. I find some of the tempi slack, the string/wind blend kind of viscous and gluey, the bass line overdone and a few odd little things disappear here and there. It's beautiful stuff if you make the assumptions Stoky makes.

In all this material, I would encourage everyone to listen to Paul Paray on Mercury for readings of absolute integrity, great drama, eloquent musicianship in lovely sound...and the Detroit Symphony plays rings around Stoky's outfit. Stoky might be OK to have for supplementary listening, but Paray is far more convincing from a purely musical standpoint.

Which is, after all, why you buy music in general and Bizet in particular, isn't it?