Franz Schmidt ?

[EnemyoftheStoat]

IMHO rather soggy compared to CSO/Järvi on Chandos.

To my ears the VPO sounds properly Central European rather than Star Wars - and with in-tune woodwind in the first movement; when I listen to the Järvi I always tell myself at the beginning "it'll get better".

[Maclintick]

To my ears the VPO sounds properly Central European rather than Star Wars - and with in-tune woodwind in the first movement; when I listen to the Järvi I always tell myself at the beginning "it'll get better".

I'd agree insofar as the CSO/Järvi is sourced from a live recording & obviously contains imprecisions absent from the studio VPO/Bychkov, but in terms of the initial "lebhaft", the VPO sound "molto tentativo", or perhaps "sehr vorläufig" in comparison -- unsurprisingly in view of the fiendish demands of the composer at the outset. After the initial downbeat the seconds & clarinets have to agree on a unison semiquaver pattern elaborated in various combinations through the succeeding bars, as other voices are added. I can't think of a hairier launch off the blocks for an orchestra, apart maybe from "La Bohème", which is inevitably messy live.

THE "Star Wars" orchestra is of course the LSO. When I've heard the the CSO live I've always been struck by how they've preserved an essentially "mitteleuropäische" sonority.