Glazunov, Prokofiev, Sibelius

[Dave2002]

The grande reférénce Russe of Glazunov Cycles is surely this one.....

JAPANESE TEXT DELETED HERE .... TO REDUCE (HOPEFULLY) PROBLEMS.
I THINK THIS WORKS SO WILL MAKE THIS CHANGE PERMANENT!

.USSRSO/Svetlanov, 1989....nla, sadly but the Warners set in the Svetlanov Edition is the same one, though whether the glorious, audiophile-quality Venezia sound has survived the transfer I couldn't say. I sent back my early Tchaikovsky/Rachmaninov purchases from that Warners Edition for stripping out the HDCD and for sounding overprocessed, replacing them with Japanese-issue originals. But musically, Svetlanov seems to find the perfect balance between the sweetly lyrical, the Mendelssohnian spritz and sparkle, and the brassy firepower.

As D2K2 said, the symphonies often stay in the mind for favourite movements - the first three of my favourite the 7th are lovely, the Pastoral nickname apt. But then his addiction to Maestoso finales takes over once again..... A very Russian headache.

But my favourite work of his is The Sea (1889), which takes some of the sonic sea-archetypes-clichés familiar from Mendelssohn's Calm Sea, The Flying Dutchman and Debussy's later epitome (all the way through to Enescu and David Matthews, some tradition...) and makes them into another perfect storm. I think Svetlanov recorded it twice, my preference is the Exton release, c/w the even more astounding The Sea (1907) by Mikalojus Ciurlionis** and the Debussy itself (gloomily overpowering, like a hurricane in The Baltic), all live in one concert taped with raw immediacy in a slightly boxy-sounding acoustic which won't be to everyone's taste! Very exciting though, to hear the great Russian Orchestra unleash its fire on Debussy's final pages. Who cares if it's supposed to be French?

http://www.hmv.co.jp/en/artist_Classical-Collection-Orchestral-Music_000000000065307/item_Umi_2558188

Glazunov's The Sea is included in the Svetlanov Symphony cycle on Venezia, but it's the same performance in a very different mastering - replacing raw immediacy with almost too much space and distance (to match the acoustic for the symphonies, our old vastly reverberant friend the Large Hall of Moscow Radio... ).

** iirc, There was a Naxos CD of this available once...

Don't know what's happened here. There seems to be a lot of quoted text which doesn't show up in your original! Editing???

Japanese interference, perhaps?

Your hidden text is very interesting.

For eccentric performances try Golovanov. I have Svetlanov's set, though in the end I'm not so sure that it's better than Fedoseyev, now on Brilliant. Some of the tapes of Fedoseyev's recordings used for most CD versions seem to have suffered. I suspect the LPs may sound better (a lot?) and I've been meaning to digitise some for years, but like many things - not got round to it. Maybe Andrew Rose could come to the rescue!

(Maybe before some bonkers US driven copyright amendments make that illegal ... Or perhaps the Russians wouldn't mind Russian Melodiya pressings being used. Some have said that the Melodiya pressings are OK - maybe even good, but I always thought the EMI/Melodiya ones were the ones to chase after - my view anyway.)

[jayne lee wilson]

(***by some bizarre mischief all but one line of my post #14 disappeared.... what WAS I doing last night...? Here's the rest of it now.... I hope.)

The grande reférénce Russe of Glazunov Cycles is surely this one.....

http://www.hmv.co.jp/en/artist_グラズノフ...�CD）_1221356

USSRSO/Svetlanov, 1989....nla, sadly but the Warners set in the Svetlanov Edition is the same one, though whether the glorious, audiophile-quality Venezia sound has survived the transfer I couldn't say. I sent back my early Tchaikovsky/Rachmaninov purchases from that Warners Edition for stripping out the HDCD and for sounding overprocessed, replacing them with Japanese-issue originals. But musically, Svetlanov seems to find the perfect balance between the sweetly lyrical, the Mendelssohnian spritz and sparkle, and the brassy firepower.

As D2K2 said, the symphonies often stay in the mind for favourite movements - the first three of my favourite the 7th are lovely, the Pastoral nickname apt. But then his addiction to Maestoso finales takes over once again..... A very Russian headache.

But my favourite work of his is The Sea (1889), which takes some of the sonic sea-archetypes-clichés familiar from Mendelssohn's Calm Sea, The Flying Dutchman and Debussy's later epitome (all the way through to Enescu and David Matthews, some tradition...) and makes them into another perfect storm. Strikingly modern-sounding and motivically-obsessive, I think Svetlanov recorded it twice****, my preference is the Exton release, c/w the even more astounding The Sea (1907) by Mikalojus Ciurlionis** and the Debussy itself (gloomily overpowering, like a hurricane in The Baltic), all live in one concert taped with raw immediacy in a slightly boxy-sounding acoustic which won't be to everyone's taste! Very exciting though, to hear the great Russian Orchestra unleash its fire on Debussy's final pages. Who cares if it's supposed to be French?

http://www.hmv.co.jp/en/artist_Class...em_Umi_2558188

Glazunov's The Sea is included in the Svetlanov Symphony cycle on Venezia, but it's the same performance in a very different mastering - replacing raw immediacy with almost too much space and distance (to match the acoustic for the symphonies, our old vastly reverberant friend the Large Hall of Moscow Radio... ).

** iirc, There was a Naxos CD of this available once...
**** just snatched a listen to the quicker version featured in the vast Melodiya "Anthology of Russian Symphony [sic] Music", which I found via "Discover" on Qobuz HiFi; it's a much cleaner, more naturally-set recording, but cooler too - lacks the leaden intensities of the live Exton one. Choices, choices, but this quicker version is featured on the more recent, remastered Melodiya Glazunov anthology with The Forest and other orchestral works, bit of a mixed bag.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Glazunov-Sy...unov+svetlanov)

[BBMmk2]

Hopefully that won't be a set I'll have to acquire!! P:)

[Dave2002]

JLW

Some very odd goings on here. I wonder if the board software has some problems.

Most of of my reply to you in which I pointed out the missing material in your post with the Japanese text has now disappeared,
and I haven't touched it. Not sure if I wrote anything useful - but it's a bit of a pain to discover that great chunks of text can vanish,
with no effort on my part.

I think I have to blame the Japanese - though that might get me in jail ....!!!

I was pretty sure the text was there yesterday.

PS: Just tried to edit yesterday's post, and indeed, as I half suspected, most of my text is there. Something is causing most of it to disappear from the screen - perhaps if I just delete the Japanese bit, it will reappear.

PPS: Indeed it has reappeared- see msg 16.

[Dave2002]

Hopefully that won't be a set I'll have to acquire!! P:)

That seems fair, and I guess some of us know how much you saved by not buying the new Mozart box! Mrs d always tries to "save me money" by buying things. I do that too, but if I really want to save I just don't buy anything at all.

Best wishes! Hope you're starting to feel better, and that a little banter helps.

[Dave2002]

Another postscript. Following the link to the mixed bag of a Glazunov twofer, I noticed mention of a CD by a composer I'd not heard of - Tikhon Krennikov, or if I had heard of him, I did not remember the name, at the bottom the targeted page. Seems that the Economist published a quite charitable obituary of him - http://www.economist.com/node/9721710

I had a quick listen to part of his violin concerto on Qobuz - sort of generic Russian - but maybe I'll have to try a few more pieces. I suspect not a great name, but someone who got caught up in the tides of history, and unlike Stravinsky and Prokofiev was not able to do much more than survive. Of course, the Economist might have been too generous in its evaluation - who can tell?

[EnemyoftheStoat]

Another postscript. Following the link to the mixed bag of a Glazunov twofer, I noticed mention of a CD by a composer I'd not heard of - Tikhon Krennikov, or if I had heard of him, I did not remember the name, at the bottom the targeted page. Seems that the Economist wrote a quite charitable obiturary of him - http://www.economist.com/node/9721710

I had a quick listen to part of his violin concerto on Qobuz - sort of generic Russian - but maybe I'll have to try a few more pieces. I suspect not a great name, but someone who got caught up in the tides of history, and unlike Stravinsky and Prokofiev was not able to do much more than survive. Of course, the Economist might have been too generous in its evaluation - who can tell?

Oh, I think Khrennikov did alright, at least during the Soviet era, when he gave such as Shostakovich and Prokofiev (and other "modernists") a bad time.

PS Having now read the obit (from the pen of Lebrecht) I see that I'm not stating anything new here, but the mitigations of TK's behaviour are relatively new.

[BBMmk2]

That seems fair, and I guess some of us know how much you saved by not buying the new Mozart box! Mrs d always tries to "save me money" by buying things. I do that too, but if I really want to save I just don't buy anything at all.

Best wishes! Hope you're starting to feel better, and that a little banter helps.

Onwards and upwards, thanks Dave. Going rather nicely.

[richardfinegold]

Oh, I think Khrennikov did alright, at least during the Soviet era, when he gave such as Shostakovich and Prokofiev (and other "modernists") a bad time.

PS Having now read the obit (from the pen of Lebrecht) I see that I'm not stating anything new here, but the mitigations of TK's behaviour are relatively new.

That was my memory of Khrennikov as well. he and Zhadnov did the heavy lifting for Stalin with the Composers that they wanted to intimidate

[Dave2002]

That was my memory of Khrennikov as well. he and Zhadnov did the heavy lifting for Stalin with the Composers that they wanted to intimidate

I was aware of a few composers whose major work seemed to be trashing the work of other Russian composers, but I didn't bother to remember their names. Khrennikov may have been one. The article I linked to, perhaps too generously, suggested that this was still a better option than completely denouncing the others and leaving them to a much quicker and more unpleasant fate.

The very recent interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev suggest that sometimes people in societies we don't know well do behave in ways which make sense to them, and possibly do also demonstrate a deeper humanity than is obvious to outside observers.

Another composer who seems ultimately to have behaved well was Glazunov, who in an earlier period seems to have defended musicians against political unpleasantness albeit in a somewhat odd way, even though we know that Stravinsky wasn't over fond of him, and he was certainly no angel if one bases an assessment purely on his habits. He certainly does appear to have had a fondness for drink, and I continue to be amused about the story of him drinking vodka "discreetly" through a rubber tube.

Sometimes taking a direct stand against oppression does not work, and more people suffer. I just don't know enough about the people concerned in some historical situations to know whether they were behaving well, or badly.

[jayne lee wilson]

JLW

Some very odd goings on here. I wonder if the board software has some problems.

Most of of my reply to you in which I pointed out the missing material in your post with the Japanese text has now disappeared,
and I haven't touched it. Not sure if I wrote anything useful - but it's a bit of a pain to discover that great chunks of text can vanish,
with no effort on my part.

I think I have to blame the Japanese - though that might get me in jail ....!!!

I was pretty sure the text was there yesterday.

PS: Just tried to edit yesterday's post, and indeed, as I half suspected, most of my text is there. Something is causing most of it to disappear from the screen - perhaps if I just delete the Japanese bit, it will reappear.

PPS: Indeed it has reappeared- see msg 16.

Lines 2 and 3 (caps & bold) of my post as you quoted in #16 weren't written by me....! (Anyone here own to that?).
VERY strange. I think Putin doesn't like criticism of comrade Khrennikov, and this forum is a well known hotbed of the liberal-élite.... Child's play after ensuring a victory for the GOP.

But #17 is indeed the authentic words what I wrote... copy & paste saves the day! (again)...

[Dave2002]

jlw

I thought I'd explained. I had to put the lines in bold in to explain that I'd removed the Japanese text which I think caused a problem in your post, and also in mine. Originally I had all your text, but it didn't show up below those "funny" characters.

Re Comrad P, it is worth looking at Gorbachev's interview, or picking it up on iPlayer Radio.

bws, Dave