Ruslan and Ludmilla speed record

[LeMartinPecheur]

Is there anything orchestras can do with the Ruslan overture except play it ever-faster??

I got to know it through the standard Decca Solti recording which is no slouch, but was brung up short today by charity-shop acquisition: DG 439 892-2, Pletnev and the Russian National Orch, who dispose of it in 4'47" and make it sound (IMHO) hopelessly rushed and frantic. That's the impression I get from concert performances and recordings on the radio too.

Is it even possible these days to play it so it sounds comfortable? I don't have a score: do the markings or performance history indicate whether Glinka himself really wanted it to sound absolutely frenetic?

Any recommendations for a slow, poetic recording? Or ones that beat 4'47"??

[Roslynmuse]

My score is marked Presto, minim = 135

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

brung?

[LeMartinPecheur]

My score is marked Presto, minim = 135

Thanks Roslynmuse. Does that enable you to work out how long G expected the piece to last?

[LeMartinPecheur]

brung?

Yer. Where was you brung up ven??

[Roslynmuse]

It's 403 bars long = 806 minims; divided by 135 = 5.97 minutes (!) - there is a Piu Mosso at bar 373, however, knocking a few seconds off.

That's maths, though, not music-making - however, even allowing for a increase in speed of about 10% (which I think is a reasonable tolerance on that side of the metronome mark - assuming it's the composer's, and not some editor's) it would only reduce the total by half a minute or so.

4'47'' seems pretty extreme when looked at like this.

More to the point is that, IIRC, the same music is used - sung chorally - at the end of the opera and too fast a tempo would make a nonsense of both music AND text.

Postscript - just checked a vocal score on IMSLP - metronome mark there for both Overture and the end of the opera is minim = 152; still comes out at 5.3 minutes. 10% faster in that case gets us close to 4'47''!

Just goes to show - you can't make an academic exercise out of performance...

If it feels too fast, it probably is - especially if the last performance you heard was slower. But next time you hear that last performance it may just feel too slow...

[Barbirollians]

The Solti is enough for me.

[Pabmusic]

I seem to have nine recordings. Quickest are Pletnev (Russian Natiolnal Orch) and George Weldon (CBSO), both at 4.47. Then there's Barry Wordsworth (LSO) at 5.05 and Svetlanov (USSR State SO) at 5.06. Then Vernon Handley and the Hallé come in at 5.17, Ansermet (Paris Conservertoire Orch) at 5.20, Markevitch (Lamoreux Orch) at 5.26, Monteux (Boston SO live) at 5.34, and Boult and the LPO at 5.35. It seems that Solti comes in at 5.04. A very un-scientific study, but perhaps suggesting that expected speeds have quickened over the years.

[Ferretfancy]

Isn't there a general trend towards faster speeds? I notice this particularly with modern pianists, even some of the best seem to lose some of the sense, allowing their undoubted technical skill to take over. It's rather like that irritating gimmick of speeded up action on television, just because it can be done doesn't mean that it should be done.

[Pabmusic]

Isn't there a general trend towards faster speeds?...

Yes, I think you're right.

[PJPJ]

Markevitch (Lamoreux Orch) at 5.26

It sounds faster to me, perhaps because the timps are so well and excitingly recorded. However, the recent release on DG Originals is much more shrill compared with my memory of the LP. The recent Nelsons Proms performance seemed no slouch either at roughly the same length as Markevitch's. I must dig out the sprinters Pletnev and Solti again, though my memory of the latter is indistinct timps.

[Parry1912]

I've only got one recording: Reiner at 5.19

[reinerfan]

I have some 14 versions including Solti, who sounds rushed to me, but Dobrowen with the Danish State Radio S.O., who comes in at 4'39" manages to phrase it so that it doesn't. The slowest is Boult with the London P.O. at 5'45" but, Boult being Boult, he still manages to make the overture sound fine. It only sounds a bit slow when doing a direct comparison with one of the faster recordings.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Isn't there a general trend towards faster speeds? I notice this particularly with modern pianists, even some of the best seem to lose some of the sense, allowing their undoubted technical skill to take over. It's rather like that irritating gimmick of speeded up action on television, just because it can be done doesn't mean that it should be done.

Very interesting view ferret. It doesn't seem very long ago that received wisdom seemed to be saying that works generally got performed more slowly as time went by. I think that the argument went that, with romantic and post-romantic works especially, conductors' searches for ever-deeper 'emotion' and 'significance' led inevitably to ponderous tempi. Then I suppose, along came HIPP and the accretions in the classical era got stripped away - eg by the discovery that Beethoven's metronome couldn't simply be assumed to have been faulty.

So maybe we've seen a reversal of a process in less than a lifetime?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

How about this HIPP version?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMvOLepoBO8

... = 4' 38".