Customer Reviews

Moussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition; Night on the Bare Mountain [Hybrid SACD]

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while the SACD sound is very good and 'Pictures' sounds very lively, the other recordings on this disc sound bad. even with the SACD sound, it is as though the orchestra is playing in a room down the hall from the recording devices. now, just because the sound is good on 'Pictures' doesn't mean it is a good recording. the Reiner recording with the CSO is so much better than this, it makes me wonder why anyone would produce a recording if it could not compete with the Reiner/CSO recording. i never get the feeling while listening to this new recording that the orchestra is really into the music. it almost sounds rush an unrehearsed. perhaps i am just biased, but i would rather listen to the older Reiner recording than this newer one.

This is the Hybrid SACD version of Valery Gergiev's recording of

Mussorgski's "Pictures at an Exhibition". Recorded with the

Vienna Philharmonic, instead of the Kirov Orchestra. The

performance is good, a little bit better than most, but then it

is hard to make too many mistakes with the Ravel orchestration.

All that is required is a good conductor and a good orchestra.

Gergiev and the VPO deliver good solid performances, and Phillips

delivers good sound as usual. I am only basing this on hearing

the CD portion of the disc, as I do not yet own a SACD player.

The other works are also performed well "Night on Bald Mountain"

gets a rousing performance as expected, but all the performances

sound good if a little too polished. I think I wanted a little

more risk taking on them. But all in all a good disc.

I have enjoyed this hybrid SACD very much - but I feel it has one slight flaw which prevents it from being top notch.

The stereo SACD layer is as usual a slight improvement over the normal stereo CD layer - but the surround layer really opens out the sound giving much more presence and detail.

But I was always aware of the rear speaker channels, e.g. in Bydlo from the Pictures - whereas in the finest SACDs I have heard, like Uchida's Schubert Sonata D568 and Harnoncourt's Bruckner 9, the rears were brilliantly (but subtlely) used to give a real concert-hall feel - here you feel there are VPO musicians playing behind you a bit, which isn't really realistic in my opinion.

Perhaps it's significant that despite the DSD logo on the cover, this is a PCM 24 bit recording, while the very best SACDs use pure DSD.

But don't let me put you off, this is a very vivid and enjoyable SACD.