Rodion Shchedrin: Carmen Ballet; Alexander Glazunov: Carnaval Overture

Rodion Shchedrin (Composer), Dmitry Shostakovich (Composer), Alexander Glazunov (Composer), Arthur Fiedler (Conductor), Boston Pops Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Boston Pops Orchestra
• Conductor: Arthur Fiedler
• Composer: Rodion Shchedrin, Dmitry Shostakovich, Alexander Glazunov
• Audio CD (March 9, 1999)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: RCA
• ASIN: B00000I9MH
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #311,783 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars splendid percussion and remarkable Carmen, March 6, 2001

By 

Mystery Devotee (Lowell, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rodion Shchedrin: Carmen Ballet; Alexander Glazunov: Carnaval Overture (Audio CD)

Arthur Fiedler's recording of Shchedrin's Carmen Ballet is excellent in every way. The composer's imaginative rescoring of several sections of Bizet's opera for strings and percussion is a superb reorchestration exploiting a full range of percussion timbre that reveals an incredible array of views of the score that continually delight the listener. The Ballet, composed as a vehicle for his celebrated wife- prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet, Maya Plisetskaya - is an extraordinary orchestration which invites the listener to explore new and very different colors with music originally scored for Bizet's classically constituted orchestra of the opera pit. While the disk also includes the Incidental Music to "Hamlet" by Shostakovich and Glazunov's Carnival Overture, it's the Shchedrin performance that makes the disk worth any price for the listener who values discovering new things in music well known in an earlier guise.

3.0 out of 5 stars Great performance, disappointing sonics., October 29, 2009

By 

Kimba W. Lion "kimbawlion.com" (the East Coast) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rodion Shchedrin: Carmen Ballet; Alexander Glazunov: Carnaval Overture (Audio CD)

I have yet to find a "High Performance" series CD that isn't disappointing sonically. I purchased this to replace my old Gold Seal LP. I will admit that the LP was somewhat lacking in bass, but they have overcompensated for that on this CD, resulting in a dark, somewhat murky sound. Also, the LP had a wonderful sense of space, a natural sound to the strings and a solid sense of instrument location. On this CD, they seem to have sucked out all the "air" and sound of the hall; all the instruments sound crowded together. Sometimes it sounds like a mono recording that has been tricked up to simulate stereo. And while the percussion sounds good, if a bit distant, the strings do not sound like real instruments.

It's a shame that the original recording was treated this way, because the performance is wonderful, full of the exuberance and panache that Fiedler brought to exciting music like this. It seems doubtful that we'll get another, better reissue of this recording, so we have to make do with this CD, which only gets a half-hearted recommendation from me.

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Snap, Crackle, Pop!, March 1, 2000

By 

F. Tracey "artsdude" (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rodion Shchedrin: Carmen Ballet; Alexander Glazunov: Carnaval Overture (Audio CD)

If you haven't ordered a High Performance CD, you're really missing out. This particular release for me falls below some of the others. But it's still fun. The main work, the ballet music based on "Carmen," is quite unusual. All of the familiar themes are there, but with a lot of bombastic percussive inflictions. There's some tinkering with some of the themes, and where you expect to hear them, but it's all part of the surprise of the recording. This is a fun CD for driving down the highway. There are a lot of bells and whistles, all in the Fiedlerian tradition. If that's what you like, you shant be disappointed. I also recommend the recording of "The Rite of Spring" (with Seiji Ozawa), and the Mahler CD. Each are part of the High Performance series and are very thrilling. There's also a High Performance recording with Eugene Ormandy and his Philadelphia Orchestra which, for me, sounds more like a run through than a high performance.