Customer Reviews

Dvorák -Symphony No. 9

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
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Mariss Jansons at the helm of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra seems to be a marriage made in heaven. Though there are countless recordings of the redoubtable Symphony No. 9 'From the New World' of Antonin Dvorák (including some superb and timeless performances), suddenly all others pale in the splendor of this new Hybrid SACD release from Rco Live. Jansons goes for the majesty of the work, allowing all of the folk tune influences that are the core of Dvorák's works to sing but never to take front stage form the grand architectural sweep of the symphony.

The brilliance of the Royal Concertgebouw is legendary and here it virtually glows in the sonics of the performance. Each section is exceptional and first desk solos are among the finest on record. There is an urgency to the rapid movements and a warm mellow flow to the Adagio and the Largo movements. Jansons apparently has found the comunicative niche with this orchestra and we can only expect great things to follow.

This is a wondrous recording of a symphony too often dismissed as 'too popular'. Recommended without reservation. Grady Harp, October 05

This performance of Dvorak's Ninth Symphony by the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest under Mariss Jansons takes it more as a Romantic symphony in the vein of Schubert, underplaying the lilt and dance-rhythms of Bohemia/Czechia, Dvorak's own beloved homeland, focussing more on large, Romantic gestures. As such, I believe it couldn't be played more beautiful, and with a feeling for the over-arching, grand melodic lines, but there certainly are alternatives that are at least as good, like for example Rafael Kubelik's recording with the Berliner Philharmoniker (1973).
I guess that first and foremost this performance is for aficionados of the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest under its new chief conductor (of which I am certainly one). Anyhow, this is a beautiful, lushly recorded and nicely idiosynchratic performance.

Two of our five-star generals among the Top Critics have weighed in already, one describing Jansons' "New World" as fast (it isn't), the other spouting a rave while saying nothing about the performance. Sigh. As anyone with ears knows, Jansons has always been a conductor of moderate temperament -- perhaps even more so in Amsterdam -- so it's no surprise that this reading is conventionally paced. Its contours are fairly soft, the Scherzo is too elegant to be a real Czech furiant, and the finale is more sonorous than dramatic.

But the playing is far from concventional. The Royal Concertgebouw, while not outdoing their excellent recording under Harnoncourt (on Teldec), play with their accustomed luster and depth. The orchestra's house label captures the reading in clear, vivid sonics, although we aren't placed quite close enough for maximum ipact.

There are many great recordings of this thrice-familiar work -- my favorites include the above mentioned Harnoncourt, Bernstein with the NY Phil., Fricsay, and Reiner. All display more originality and thrust than Jansons' account, but given the fineness of the playing and the recorded sound, this is a commendable account, too.

To the topic of this and other SACD on the Concertgebouw/Label recording properties:
The local Dutch recording engineers hired by the Concertgebouw to "immortalize" this or other live concert for posterity and market it in the SACD version, in the process they have come up with a faulty product.
Be it as it may, from the stand point of interpretation (reading) which is not the concern here, the end product is disappointing in the Audio sense.

The equipment used by the recording team here might easily be one the most advanced there is; It is capable of capturing the sound in almost all of its clarity, with great wide frequency-range and sometimes great dynamics, but the concept of where to put the microphones and where the sound is captured from is wrong, wrong, wrong.

It is wrong in the sense that they offer us a sit at the back of the Concertgebouw hall balcony, distanced and far away from where the action takes place, when there is so much better prospective over the orchestra and hall acoustics from middle of the hall, or from a sit closer to the orchestra.

We should not dream here of the golden age, the dawn of the stereo era (Reiner/Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra, a two channel recording technique immortalized by Leslie Chase for RCA, 1954) that would be a bit like comparing oranges with apples.
But instead, we can compare various recordings from this present age - recordings made on location at the same Concertgebouw hall with this SACD recording at hand:
To compare, take the Rachmaninov symphony 1 & 2 (DDD):
It has all of the sonic components to boost: Great tonality, great dynamic range - AND - great outlook on the orchestra, great sound-stage and retrieval of hall ambience - all this if compared to the present SACD (the Concertgebouw own label) - the SACD sound stage will barely expand beyond the two front speakers and will sound like a somewhat stretched mono recording; no true spread, no true soundstage (multi-microphones technique went wrong?)

Note in this regards recordings made by Decca and by Philips on location at the Concertgebouw hall were much more successful in conveying the total sound--picture:
Take the Philips ADD recording of Stravinsky/ Firebird, Petruschka, Rite of Spring / Concertgebouw/Colin Davis;
Take the Rachmaninov Symphonies, (Decca DDD recording) with Ashkenazy.
Take the Philips ADD recording of Ravel with Haitink, take the Grieg/Schumann with Arrau and Haitink, and more, much more - all have this property of conveying a concert-hall "feel".

The decision of the Dutch recording team made for the Concertgebouw label of how and from where to capture the sound - I am sure - will not get down the history pages as great achievements the way Mohr-Layton & Leslie Chase (RCA); Cornall-Moorfoot, Culshaw-Perry, Kenneth Wilkinson (Decca) and other team achievements for Philips too.

Simply put; the Concertgebouw "sound" on their propriety label is too distanced, taken from too far away, has a tunnel-like sound-view - a strange and faulty approach to sound engineering.
As such, the Concertgebouw own label is a disappointment.

Reading the other reviews listed I seem to find myself in the minority in finding it impossible to seriously recommend this disc.For "RCO Live"to try and market this disc containing approx.42 mins of music with NO coupling in the face of so many REALLY great recordings(all with couplings I may add)is surely misguided and if for no other reason I find this impossible to recommend.If a recording conducted by Jansons is an absolute must,then his earlier EMI recording with the Oslo Philharmonic(coupled with Smetana's Vltava)is the one I would direct you to

The Dvorak Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" has been one of the most widely performed and recorded orchestral works, ever since it received its world premiere with the composer conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall back in the 1890s. Indeed, there are many legendary recordings made of it, with some of the most notable ones consisting of Rafael Kubelik's celebrated Deutsche Grammophon recording with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Fritz Reiner's with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Istvan Kertesz's with the London Symphony Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnannyi's with The Cleveland Orchestra and Georg Solti's with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. More recently, there have been great recordings from the likes of Ivan Fischer with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Claudio Abbado with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Colin Davis with the London Symphony Orchestra, Kurt Masur with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and Nikolaus Harnoncourt with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; of these my two personal favorites are Masur's, and especially, Harnoncourt's. To this obviously crowded field of superb recordings, we should add too Mariss Jansons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra? But is this recent recording from the Concertgebouw's new recording label one which should be regarded as the definitive version? The answer is yes, but only if your sole criterion is superlative sound quality.

My favorite Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra recording of this symphony remains Harnoncourt's, simply because he emphasized not only swifter tempi, but leaner orchestral textures which are a subtle blend of both late 19th Century Romantic orchestral traditions and Dvorak's own deep abiding interest in both Bohemian and American folk song traditions. Here, all Jansons seems to offer are swifter tempi - most notably an incredibly fast first movement which is much faster than virtually all of the aforementioned recordings - and a rather lush, Romantic interpretation which minimizes Dvorak's emphasis on folk songs, in favor of the score's vast orchestral textures. While the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra's playing is first-rate, especially from its strings and winds, regrettably, that aspect of this recording seems less interesting simply because of Jansons' rather routine interpretation of Dvorak's score. If you're interested in acquiring a splendid recording of this orchestra performing Dvorak's 9th Symphony, then your choice ought to be Harnoncourt's, which still has superb sound for a late 1990s digital recording. Otherwise, I would strongly advise you to consider the others I've mentioned, with highest honors going to Kubelik's, Reiner's, Solti's, Masur's, Fischer's, Davis's, Dohannyi's, and Abbado's recordings.

I've heard dozens of recordings of The New World Symphony and this one is disappointing. The performance is nothing special and the recording is hazy. Don't bother with this dog.