Customer Reviews

Stravinsky: The Firebird (Complete Ballet); Fireworks [Hybrid SACD]

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

 

 

Best sound SACD reissue yet:
clear, detailed, resolution, sound-stage, dynamics. Either 2 or 3 channel DSD SACD. Good old Dorati's performance has drive, good tempi.
Recommended !

This new release of this near-legendary 1959 Dorati/LSO performance goes to the head of the class. Using the earlier CD release as a sonic guide (the series was originally overseen by Wilma Cozart Fine), Universal's audio engineers have, again, given us a nearly perfect transfer of the original master tape to this newest, most advanced digital medium. I can't imagine something more musically satisfying.

No restoration of a classic series of performances has received anything quite resembling the intense loving attention doled out for these classic Dorati recordings of Stravinsky on the Mercury Living Presence label. The results are beyond sensational: this is one of the pivotal recordings of classical music in the last century. Listening to these performances today, half a century later, is nearly a religious experience, and the phenomenal quality fo both sound and performance fully justifies all the time and energy put into their re-release in the SACD format. This is the real thing, the goods, the cat's meow!

Anyone wishing to hear just how great a composer Stravinsky was at the very outset of his career need only sit down to the complete Firebird as played here by the London Symphony. It's quite astonishing to hear such detailing, such superb balances, from an orchestra still unfamiliar with the modern ultra-filigreed works of a Boulez or a Ligetti. Dorati's conducting reminds us of his fabulous work with not only other Russian composers, but moderns, such as Schoenberg. The distinctive clarity of Stravinsky's orchestration; the novelty and freedom from cant of his musical language; his stunning ear for striking color contrasts; all these burst forth in overwhelming display in even Stravinsky's earliest works.

This is what 20th century classical music is all about. If you're curious about the greatest classical composers of the last century you can't do better than begin with this CD.

Highest possible recommendation!

It's amazing. These recordings were made almost 50 years ago on 3-track half inch tape, which as we know from many SACD's being made from this technology, was a medium that could be surprisingly faithful to the "Living Presence" of the original performance. These were good recordings on vinyl but on SACDs they live up to present day standards. How wonderful that we have this technology to rejuvenate these old, masterful performances of fifty years ago!

Of course the works themselves are musical masterpieces, at least The Firebird and Song of the Nightingale, and the other two works on this recording are sheer fun to listen to.

My only reservation is that these rejuvenated Mercury Living Presence recordings are a little pricy ($19 list), competitive with recent SACD recordings, but not with the RCA Living Stereo rejuvenations on SACD, which are only $12 list, if I recall. Still, if a performance of favorite works is world class, it is all the more amazing to be able to hear them in such dazzling clarity when they are 50 years old, and tempting to "pay the piper" anyhow, with the premium price.

I am not sure why amazon has done this, but they have taken reviews from the "Stravinsky: The Firebird (Complete Ballet); Fireworks [Hybrid SACD] (Audio CD)" and linked them to this MP3 download - which is clearly the Stravinsky-conducted Firebird, with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. Which goes hand and hand with the other two Stravinsky conducts Stravinsky albums.

Just listen to a few tracks of the actual Dorati-conducted version and =this= version, and you can hear the difference. I don't mean in sound/reproduction quality - I mean in the difference in the orchestras. Take the finale, for example, or another "track", say Part 14, "Dialogue between Ivan Tsarevich and Kashchei": the difference in the orchestrations is noticeable, especially in the drums.

As for reviewing the actual performance, I cannot really. As I am new to the Firebird ballet and actually to Stravinsky also. But I wanted to clarify that the other reviews are not really for this album but for another one.

One does not need a SACD Player to listen to this magnificient disk of sweeping, glorious and pervasive sound - the CD is good enough, and can be a preview of what could be heard on a SACD Player. I have rarely enjoyed better sound than this even on the latest DDD disks of brand labels.