Customer Reviews

Dvorák: Tone Poems

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2 star:		(1)
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As overjoyed as I am to see these late orchestral gems performed by a "name-brand" orchestra and conductor for a major label, I find these performances too problematic to recommend whole heartedly. As with his other recent efforts with EMI, Rattle's work here is mostly a mixed bag, where moments of tremendous energy are followed by dead patches of truly stiff playing. It doesn't help that Rattle never lets loose, keeping these romantic symphonic poems ridiculously earthbound when transcendence is so necessary. Take, for example, the rising climax of the Water Goblin - over a tremendous drum roll, the brass play the creatures theme as he struggles with the maiden. The goblin is, of course, defeated, leading into a wonderful coda, which carries the tremendous tension of that final outburst with the added irony of sorrow for the water spirit. However, here, this tremendous moment is so underplayed. The trumpets are barely audible (forget the lower brass) and Rattle carries the affair with a perfunctory nonchalance. Kertesz (Decca), Jarvi (Chandos), and Harnoncourt (Teldec) all surpass Rattle in this poem. Or take the Golden Spinning Wheel. Barely audible horns (a serious and persistent problem in this series) in no way conjure the heroic, bucolic sound necessary to call the procession together. Even in the Noonday Witch, the best in the set, the necessary amount of sleaze and grotesque is conspicuously absent. Rattle is unable to change the color and timbre of his band to suit these four remarkably different and brilliantly orchestrated works, instead choosing a "one size fits all" approach ill fitting for music as dynamic as this. Worse still, EMI's engineers heavily emphasize the strings while placing the brass (especially the horns) so far back in the rear that they are practically inaudible. For the symphonic poems, look to Kertesz (the Wood Dove is absent), Jarvi (a particularly wonderful Water Goblin), Harnoncourt (the poems are coupled with brilliant readings of the symphonies), Kubelik (not particular favorites of mine but still stunning readings) or Mackerras (who's stunning reading of The Golden Spinning Wheel is coupled with an equally fierce 6th Symphony). There is better Dvorak out there. I would pass on this.

Like the Harnoncourt-Concertgebouw package of this exact concert, this meticulously produced twofer from Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic includes four Dvorak tone poems -- "ballads" the conductor calls them -- in a poorly-construed package that takes up two CDs when the whole thing could have been delivered on a single CD, either in super audio or with a cut or two, to offer this for a discount.

As it is, Amazon sells this as a two-for-one proposition. However, because almost every other rendition of these four works -- "The Golden Spinning Wheel", "The Wood Dove", "The Noonday Witch" and "The Water Goblin" -- you can put your hands on is more exciting than these, the value of this is significantly degraded. Most other reoordings are also more Slavic, something you probably wouldn't expect from a German orchestra and British conductor.

And they don't let you down in that regard! Rattle's attack in this music, if you dare call it that, is ultramusical and international. He eschews overstatement, both musically and emotionally, 100 percent of the time. I haven't heard hundreds of recordings of this music but every one I've heard is more exciting than these, more given to Slavic temperament, and many are just as involving from an architectural standpoint.

Rattle by contrast carries on with genial performances that emphasize individual elements of the score, almost as if he's tending too much to the trees and not enough to the forest This is fine as far as it goes but it leaves too much out of the music and basically misses the big picture.

These exact four tone poems were released on another twofer by Harnoncourt that received plentiful critical plaudits and are still considered de rigeur interpretations in the The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music. Other remarkable recordings have been turned in by Czech conductors Talich, Chalabala, and Kubelik. Some notable non-Slavs have done them too -- Jarvi, Gunzenhauser,and American Theodore Kuchar -- to some or great acclaim.

I note the same marketing shortcoming as the Harnoncourt issue: Rattle and Harnoncourt put 83 minutes and 81 minutes of music, respectively, on two CDs. In the super audio era where companies can squeeze this much music on one SACD, why didn't EMI choose to do that and release this as an SACD? It would have given the recording a novelty no other could match. Furthermore, they could have marketed this as one of the reasons the Berliners chose Rattle as their conductor -- because they wanted to perform repertoire outside their historic and expected range.

Indeed, when Rattle arrived in Berlin, the story was his selection marked a turning point in the history of the great orchestra. Rattle's charge was to take the orchestra in new and different directions, both interpretively (with his penchant for period performance) and in terms of repertory. This recording was a chance to capitalize on all that. It now appears to be an opportunity lost.

To add a few thoughts from this listener: I bought this CD recently because I was intrigued with Rattle's recording of Debussy that came out about the same time. I was not (and am still not) crazy about Rattle's interpretation of the Debussy, but the playing and sound of this superb orchestra under Rattle was so fine that my curiousity compelled me to try this disc as well. I was not disappointed.

The music is well-described in the other reviews. Dvorak, to my mind, tended to do a better job with the open-ended format of these tone poems than he sometimes did with symphonic form. Perhaps he felt less constrained. In any event, these tone poems are indeed top-drawer Dvorak, and less known than they should be.

A couple of reviews in the major publications have been critical of Rattle's interpretation of these works. That's fair. As with Rattle's Debussy disc, from time to time he seems to become absorbed in the beauty of the individual moment, in the process letting the pulse drift and losing the thread of the musical architecture.

But I have to admit that he's a master at making the most out of the beauty of the individual moment, and with the Berlin Philharmonic, has a superb vehicle with which to do it.

As with the Debussy disc, the recording seems to me to be excellent, although I have to agree with others that the exceptionally wide dynamic range in some quiet spots almost causes you to wonder where the sound went. (It's entirely possible, though, that part of that is Rattle's doing--it is entirely consistent with, for example, his recording of Sibelius's 4th Symphony with Birmingham years ago.) What I particularly like, though, is how different the orchestra sounds with EMI versus DG. I hear more individual detail in the EMI recordings; a more close-in perspective, and less of a glossy homogenous sheen on the strings. (This is not to dis the DG "style"--I really enjoyed the sound on DG's recent Abbado Pelleas excerpts disc as well--although some of the Karajan efforts suffered from "too much of a good thing.")

So, one could ask for performances with more forward motion and coherence, but, when the playing and sound of the orchestra are this good, there is some real listening pleasure to be had.

These are late works of Dvorak, written after all the symphonies and just before Rusalka. Yet, over the years, they have been curiously underrated. If they appeared at all it was usually as a fill-up to the symphonies once CDs made longer timings desirable. Thus, they turn up under Kertesz as a part of his wonderful and ground-breaking 60's survey of Dvorak's orchestral music. Also as part of Jarvi pere's recordings of the symphonies. The great Vaclav Talich was a master of these pieces. And recently the complete set appeared in fine performances under Harnoncourt with the Concertgebouw.

The reasons for their neglect are hard to figure out. They are all based on folk-style poems by Karel Erben, official archivist of the city of Prague in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. The poems are all dark and of a fairly Grimm nature, but they all have a strong narrative thrust. Dvorak sticks to these narratives pretty tightly as he tells the stories in music, even going so far as to indulge in some Janacek-like use of Czech speech rhythms, especially in The Golden Spinning Wheel. It was this that freed him up from the classical Viennese symphonic forms of the symphonies and perhaps led inevitably on to the full operatic drama of Rusalka.

They are all substantial pieces, running to around 20 minutes each. The music is just wonderful - all the melodiousness of the symphonies is here given even freer rein. And all his mature skills as an orchestrator come to fruition in wonderful colouring and shaping.

It is the latter aspect of Rattle's performances that will probably strike you first. He elicits magical playing from the Berlin Philharmonic, conjuring an amazing range of colours and tones as they follows the twists and turns of the stories to their usually grisly ends. Then you will be captivated by the sparkling and lithe way he manages to lift rhythms to give them real bounce and life - almost Beecham-like and he too was a fan at least of the Golden Spinning Wheel. Finally you will realise that, while the form of these pieces may be a more old-fashioned ballad structure rather than classical sonata-form, Rattle is fully alive to the importance of holding their shape and musical logic together.

Smashing performances of wonderful pieces. And worthy demonstration that the Berlin Philharmonic is back to its heyday as one of the great orchestras of the world.

This is a very curious program, and would have loved to focus on the music here, but the more I listen to Rattle's developing BPO cataloque, the more it becomes apparent to me that EMI's sound quality is not up to the task, out of date, and certainly inadequate for Philharmonie in Berlin.

Just take the Berlin Phil, and listen to it playing Wagner under Maazel for BMG-RCA, a recent recording from 2004. And then listen to this one... What a huge difference in transparency, spaciousness, dynamics and therefore, simply in fun. Compared to BMG, the EMI recordings are shallow, colorless, squeaky during dynamic peaks and almost unhearable during quiet passages, hence simply disturbing and lame. Take the worst of Karajan's DG recordings from the early 1980s, and you get the idea...

To bad, for the orchestra and Sir Simon really do their best, yes they can sound really great (I heard them at Carnegie Hall), and these pieces are a very interesting and fun repertoire in their own rights...

It is time Sir Simon takes on EMI by the horns and insists on 21st century recording methodology, or I will stop buying these CDs...

I'd happen to be a lot less enthusiastic about Simon Rattle's recordings of Dvorak's magnificent symphonic poems, especially when confronted with the existing catalogue - Kertesz, Talich, Kubelik, but also recently, Harnoncourt come to mind.

What I find cruelly lacking in Rattle's approach is his reluctance to take any risks, avoiding all dramatic tension with a Berlin Philharmonic appearing stiffer and more immovable than ever. Too much is taken for granted here - the luxurious sound machine included - and that's exactly what this music doesn't need. Dvorak's poems need character before anything (recently, Nikolaus Harnoncourt with the superior Concertgebouw Orchestra perfectly understood that - just compare his "Water Goblin" with Rattle's). As Andrew Huth in the excellent liner notes with this CD explains, Dvorak "was always anxious to be appreciated as a Czech artist" - and these symphonic poems are prime examples of Czech culture. Rattle and his plush but in the end rather impersonal orchestra deliver very little in that respect, neither in spirit nor in sound, though. It's big, loud, and far too superficial, not helped by the rather undefined recording quality secured by the EMI engineers. Disappointing.

Let's straighten some things out. Some reviewers find almost no merit in this set at all, while others find it to be a winner. If you're trying to decide who to believe, I'm going to try to explain what is causing the differences in opinion. Not that I'm the final word on the subject, of course!

To begin, let me tell you that this recording features what has got to be the world's greatest orchestra with what was then their newly acquired conductor, Sir Simon Rattle. And, in case there's any doubt, the Berlin Philharmonic can play like no other orchestra under the sun, with a big tone that is a joy to hear. They also feature first desk soloists that are simply that best around. That's going to be very apparent in this recording. Rattle sure knows that his orchestra has a wide range of capabilities. The range in dynamics is huge; he surrounds the listener with the big sound of the Berliners in the climaxes and lets his first desk soloists shine in the quiet, yet equally dramatic, soft passages. I'm not sure what is more compelling, those exhilarating moments where everything is taken full throttle or the enchanting moments where the music is almost whispered. You won't fall asleep, that's for sure, for Dvorak has incorporated a large amount of drama into the works. Why don't we hear those poems more often? They contain endless soaring melodies that are possibly even more satisfying than those of the symphonies.

It's the qualities I mentioned above that will make listeners love this recording. However, we still haven't explained what it is about this disc that makes some reviewers look upon it very critically. Is this disc lacking anything? Well, I guess you could say that it is. What Rattle is unable to deliver is anything distinctively Bohemian. You can give Dvorak more fun, more sparkling energy that goes beyond bigness of tone. Perhaps more specifically, these works thrive when they're made light and airy. In his readings of these symphonic poems with the Concertgebouw, Harnoncourt instills all these desired qualities. As if though that's not enough, Harnoncourt is able to deliver nostalgia that washes over the listener in waves. Overall, I think Rattle is probably the better conductor, but Harnoncourt simply is more interesting in Dvorak, who happens to be one of his best composers. That's not to say that Rattle doesn't give any of these qualities; he's just not on the same level.

To summarize, I find myself somewhere in between those who find this a failure and those who find it a winner. There are certainly some very special moments, and the sound of the world's greatest orchestra never grows old. On the other hand, Harnoncourt is more interesting all around. I would recommend his recordings of the tone poems, coupled with the symphonies 7-9 and the piano concerto as the real recordings to have.

I picked up this two-disc set because I am a fan of Dvorak's music. Having listened to this set, I am glad I got it on sale. These four tone poems are nowhere near as enjoyable as the nine symphonies, and the orchestration itself is somewhat bland. Overall, not that great a purchase except for the die-hard Dvorak fan.

The disks were in perfect condition and sound excellent. The only problem I had was a slight defect in the case which made it difficult to extract the second disk. This was easy to correct. I Received the package sooner than I expected. Overall I'm quite satisfied with this purchase.