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41 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A total, unmitigated disaster from every point of view!, March 10, 2003
I have known this work in score (all 413 pages of it) for nearly 50 years now - and have been attentive to every recording that has surfaced. Some performances cut the guts out of the piece making a mockery of Gliere's carefully crafted architecture. Others come close to the mark. The only recording to follow GLIERE's markings accurately is still available and is conducted by Harold Farberman. The only recording which, if not entirely accurate tempo-wise, is sonically quite spectacular, and that is Sir Edward Downes'.The present recording is a colossal disaster from every perspective. When a recording announces itself as being "complete and uncut" and yet, in this case, has a performance time of 72 minutes, you know something is terribly wrong. I was antipating a solid performance from Leon Botstein, and spectacular sonics from Telarc. Neither is the case. Telarc's engineers have totally missed the boat on this recording: The LSO sounds like it was recorded in a Turkish bath house, the acoustics are so terrible. There is no definition, no balance, everything sounds muffled and totally out of kilter. This is astonishing given Telarc's past record of superlative orchestral recording. The LSO plays at its usual high level - but is totally sabatoged by Botstein's absolute dismissal of Gliere's tempo markings, either specifically or conceptually. The architecture of the four movements of this work are very carefully constructed - such that the first, second and fourth movements each have performing times between 27 and 28 minutes: yet Botstein manages the first in 22 minutes, the second in 20! and the last movement in 22. Botstein's tempi in the first movement are often not even in the same universe as Gliere's - i.e. the all important bits of liturgical chant at Rehearsal #8 are completely wrong, first measure to last. The materials given here are critical to the rest of the piece and are blown away as if they were a bit of meaningless trivia. The fourth movement, for example, begins in a "slower" tempo, progress through a series of accelerating tempi and then arrives at allegro - but is, rather, played at the arriving tempo - you know the conductor either does not know the score, or has totally misread it. The second movement builds entirely out of the "creepy" sul ponticello augmented triad blurr with which it opens - and the progression is supposed to be very, very slow. Gliere gives only one tempo marking for the movement: quarter=54. There are no accelerandi marked anywhere in the movement, and only one very brief retardando. Many of the complex figures are unplayable if the tempo is too fast - the result here is a hideous kind of sloppy rhythmic hyperventilation, not the orgasmic agitation which is, in fact, what is in the score. Here, it is all matter of fact without any feel for the "geist" of the music. The third movement lacks clarity and projection altogether. It is unlistenable. The long peroration at the end of the fourth movement, itself a very ingenious recapitulation, al roverso, of the materials that preceded it, is meaningless when it happens too soon. (See "accelerando" above). For all these (and many other reasons) I would have hoped that Mr Botstein, who is also known as a musicologist, would have paid more attention to the score. Certainly, he could have followed Gliere's markings "more closely." That he did not gives us this egregious bit of interperative charlatanism. The power of this music is fully revealed in that most fundamental of musical attributes: time. The piece works because things happen "at the right time" as much as a result of "what" happens. Gliere knows his business - and it is totally indefensible to tell the composer "you didn't write the correct tempi" in your score. Such arrogance! Such chutzpah! Avoid this recording like the plague. It is absolutely, totally wrong and negates, at virtually every point, everything that's in the score.
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~ Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky
~ Reinhold Gliere
by Ivan March
~ Ernst von Dohnanyi
~ Joshua Bell
by London Symphony Orchestra 
