Customer Reviews

Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade / Borodin: Symphony No. 2

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What makes a reference recording? First, a great rendition of the material. Second, great sound and finally, lasting appeal. This one has it all.

The interpretation of the material by the Concertgebouw Orchestra proves that Kirill Kondrashin captured the essence of the Thousand and One Nights. He tells us a story about adventure, love and magic through the music.

The balance between the festive and more dramatic parts is superb. Surprisingly, the full interpretation runs 44:16 even though it seems, at first, that it is played rather rapidly (to a rare loss of control even). But the accent on the more majestuous parts of it, make it clock at the average length of Scheherazade renditions.

As for the sound, it is incredible. Philips has done a phenomenal job at restoring this already acclaimed recording. The 96kHz 24-BIT process proves to be first rate. The placement of the instruments in the orchestra is even better that with the previous release of the material. The winds section sounds great and the brass section full. A MUST for any audiophile. The only thing they could not fix is the almost imperceptible click between takes during the conclusion. Many people might not even notice.

As for the lasting appeal, you will be coming back to this one time and time again. It is not a coincidence that Scheherazade has been recorded time and time again. It is because it is an all time favorite. It will become one of yours after listening to this performance.

Lets not forget about Borodin though. Too often, Scheherazade has been matched with the Capriccio Espagnol. This recording matches it with Borodin's Symphony No.2. Great choice! The dynamics of the piece will wake you up for sure. Some may find it a bit to aggressive, but for my part, I find it to be very well suited to complement Scheherazade. The only quirk is that it is a live rendition of the symphony. Some might not like to hear people coughing and moving. The symphony also benefits a little less from the remastering process, but chances are you will buy it for the extraordinary rendition of Scheherazade anyway...

You might also want to check EMI Great Recordings of the Century. Scheherazade by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Beecham. It gets second place on my list.

Enjoy!

Not much to add to what's already been written in other customer reviews. This is, as one other reviewer noted, the finest performance of the Scheherazade I've ever heard - from the point of view of sound quality, I don't think it has ever been equaled either. Herman Krebbers' violin is perfectly recorded, and his performance is sublime.

I have been investigating many Concertgebouw recordings lately on the basis of the sound of the recording, and I must say that I've come to a larger appreciation of the sound we get from this group in that place. This particular recording may well represent the sound of the Concertgebouw better than any other I've ever heard, placing the listener about 20 rows deep and centered; far enough away to offer a realistic perspective, yet close enough to hear individual instruments in detail (on a quality audio system, of course).

This version of Sheherazade is the one to go for. It has since it was released on LP in 1980 always been my favorit version. I have countless of other versions( i love this work)including Reiner,Mackerras,Muti,Temirkanov,Beecham,Karajan etc, and i can honestly say that no other version have such great and natural sonics (with the possibly exception of the new Telarc CD) It`s true that Kondrashin doesnt thinker with the tempos, he`s letting the music speak for itself and by doing so he is creating genuin excitment. Hermann Krebbers portrayal of Sheherezades narrative is equally compelling. A must have disc.

Kondrashin's Scheherazade has much in common with his superb Dvorak 9th with the Vienna Philharmonic. Both are excellently recorded and are performed with a fine sense of sweep and care for _both_ beauty of sound, and, drama. The music simply washes over you in finely-gradated cascades. This is a very sauve and polished performance --- every bit as glamorous as Mackerras' LSO performance. I marginally prefer the sound quality of this CD over Mackerras' Telarc one. These two CDs, with the astonishing Jansons LPO recording are the three modern Scheherazades to own. Kondrashin and Mackerras play up the beauty and glamour of this work, Jansons emphasizes its symphonic strength and intricate orchestral details.

Kondrashin and the Concertgebouw Orchestra wrought some musical wonders during his all too brief tenure as the orchestra's principal guest conductor. His conducting of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade is the finest I have heard. It is truly a very exciting, riveting performance noted for the exquisite playing of Herman Krebbers' violin. The sound quality may not be the greatest, but don't let that dissuade you from buying this CD (However, I thought it compared favorably to more recent recordings done by Philips and Teldec with Ozawa conducting the Vienna Philharmonic and Barenboim the Chicago Symphony.). The Concertgebouw Orchestra's performance is first-rate, with much warmth and enthusiasm. The same can be said for Kondrashin's reading of Borodin's second symphony.

One of the prominent and expressive Russian batons, Kirill Kondrashin (1917-1981) demonstrated in these two live recordings the reason why his deserved fame as legendary conductor.

He was, above all a sumptuous director; the fortissimos and pianissimos should be remarked with loyal accuracy. He certainly belonged to the old school, and his obsession for achieving the full meaning of score, the precise intonation made of every one of his performances a true living experience.

If you additionally, take into account the sumptuous, engaging and sweeping sound of this prodigious Orchestra, you will understand why both recordings are true emblematic references.

Scherezade, in spite of the fact of being one of the works (together with the night on the ballad mountain, Pictures at exhibition, Prince Igor, 1812 Overture and Liszt Second Hungarian Rhapsody) that along the years, has pitifully conveyed to produce a explainable fatigue in most of listeners due the reiterative abuse of thousand of repetitions, employing their leit motives as musical curtains in countless films, documental works and T.V. series.

Nevertheless, I took the risk and the result justified by far, my initial fears. Kondrashin added that enigmatic shadow of Oriental Fantasy, enriching still more, the score with this reluctant and absorbing performance(June 1979)

But believe or not the true jewel of the crown was the opulent, vigorous and breathtaking performance (June 1980) of Borodin `s Second Symphony. Kondrashin in his last year of life, elevated the status of this work to unexpected heights, gifting it of an epical taste and visible exoticism. Of course, the Concertgebouw was a fundamental factor in this mercurial and engaging version that will captivate you from the first bars.

On the other hand the process of sound edition has been literally overwhelming. My most sincere congratulations for the sound Engineers of this label who made possible to preserve for the posterity this historical document.

It never fails that a recording generally praised by critics shows up at Amazon as "the best ever." In the case of Kondrashin's widely admired Scheherazade, reviewers echo the same received opinion, and they'd be irked to hear that such opinions are generally worthless. Let's look at hamburgers by analogy. It wouldn't matter if a dozen reviewers agreed that McDondal's made "the best ever" hamburger unless those claims were backed up. Taste is individual, of course, but consensus isn't. To back up a claim about the best hamburger, a taster would have to show some experience with other hamburgers, and hopefully he'd remember some good and bad ones and could describe the difference.

Every review below fails on these counts. Nobody ofrfers useful comparisons between Kondrashin and, say, Stokowski, Beecham, Karajan, Ansermet, Reiner, Temirkanov, and other acclaimed conductors in this work. Nobody shows much experience or has a long memory for recordings going back to the Fifties and before. Claims are made about "best" playing, sound, and interpretation without basis. I'm happy if a lot of music lovers feel attached to this recording, but I also know certain things:

--"Best" is rarely a valid critical term unless there are only a handful of choices.
--Great Scheherazades exist from Beecham, Stokowski and Reiner. Kondrashin's reading doesn't have Beecham's swagger and elegance, Stokowski's dramatic flair, or Reiner's unparalleled virtuosity of execution.
--Philips' sonics are very good, but to say they are outstanding, one would have to do a side-by-side sampling with RCA's Living Stereo for Reiner, long an audio classic.

I don't feel called on to be this didactic very often, but I try to write reviews on the basis of facts like these. Taking them into account, I'd rank Kondrashin as a fine version, if a bit sober and lacking in individuality. On the other hand, I can see why it's considered one of the top contenders by listeners who desire a straightforward, extremely well played Scheherazade where the conductor doesn't do much interpretative work.

Come close, and let me tell you a tale of far-off lands, of thieves and tomb raiders, of numerous tales told and lives saved, of deception and mis-direction, and a horrible shipwreck. Ah, this can only be Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, the suite for orchestra written in 1888. But wait, it is also the story of the creation of this disc, a Philips release in a series called 50 Great Recordings, celebrating the Philips 50th anniversary.

The numerous tales told are of course the stories told by Scheherazade to the Sultan, and in our modern epic, the 50 so-called "great recordings". Scheherazade wove her epics in order to save her life. The Sultan, quite the misogynist, had vowed to kill one of his wives every night, but Scheherazade cleverly put him off his bloodthirsty task with a different story every night, for one thousand and one nights. That Scheherazade was successful and the Sultan eventually fell in love with her strikes me as rather a Pyhrric victory--who would really want a husband that had wanted to kill you? Ah well, that's the stuff of infinite self-help books nowadays. Returning to our modern epic, why would Philips re-release these old recordings? Quite frankly, to save their economic life. Re-releasing, even with the cost of remastering and the "super-digital transfer" is much less expensive than making a new recording, with the cost of the musicians, recording engineers, studio and rehearsal time, etc. And so, like Ali Baba, Philips raids the ancient "tombs" where the treasures of the dead are stored. The Philips archive yielded up not gems and precious metals, but tapes of the Concertgebouw Orchestra under the direction of Kirill Kondrashin, who passed away twenty years ago. And here's the problem with this disc. Although Philips calls this one of the "50 Great Recordings", I just can't hear it as such. Okay, it isn't really an aesthetic shipwreck, but the Concertgebouw Orchestra isn't playing its best, either. The CD notes tell us that Kondrashin was known for his extremely soft dynamics, and the consequences show in this recording, expecially at the end of the slow movement of Scheherezade, where there are real lapses in intonation and balance. Furthermore, tempi are a touch slow at times, and although the woodwinds do a superb job, the trumpets lack crispness and brilliance in their climactic spots. I love Scheherazade and have many recordings of the Concertgebouw Orchestra that I do think are among the finest recordings of certain works ever made--in particular Bernard Haitink conducting Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. The marketing of this recording, however, seems to me to be a bit of mis-direction. There are many better recordings of Scheherazade out there--this one does not give me the chills that it should.

As to the other work on the disc, Alexander Borodin's Second Symphony is somewhat of a guilty pleasure, like eating chocolate while on a diet. I first learned this piece as a teenager, playing trombone in a local orchestra in Georgia, and its appeal was immediate, full of drama and excitement. As I've matured, I've come to recognize the drama as melodrama, the excitement as bombast. It's still a fun piece, but the constant sequencing of material, the low registers of all the instruments and the frequent use of octaves in the full orchestra don't bear up well to repeated listening. Borodin was a chemist by training, not a composer, and it shows. His music lacks sophistication--climaxes are created almost entirely by increases in volume and speed, and although he shows glimpses of harmonic and melodic genius, they are glimpses only. Borodin's compositional weakness is even more apparent in this juxtaposition with Rimsky-Korsakov, and the weaknesses of the Concertgebouw Orchestra's performance are similar to those of the Rimsky-Korsakov performance. I had looked forward to this disc with great anticipation, but I'm afraid I have to advise looking for some other recording of these works.