For those with extension speakers, and have no aversion to checking things out first on You Tube, there are several performances thereon that can be readily assessed for performance and sound quality. These include downloads of the Kondrashin, Jansons, Barshai, Bernstein and Kurtz recordings. I've no idea of the You Tube source for the Rozhdestvensky but on my speakers at any rate it sounds damn good! ...
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Hmm. Are you sure it's what it says it is? Note:Originally posted by seabright View Post
Music "I. Allegro" by Kitayenko, Dmitri (Google Play • iTunes)
O.K, I have just checked it against my Olympia Rozhdestvensky CD and it is the same performance and recording as that on You|Tube. The Kitayenko has quite different timings. The Olympia/YouTube offerings are not, however, what is offered in the strange compilation CD mentioned in #41. That has all sorts of 'live' incidental sounds accompanying a very poor recording. I should add that I do not find the Olympia sound (licenced from MK) particularly objectionable, indeed I find it quite acceptable.Comment
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It's definitely not the recording issued here on the Olympia label. It's a 'live' recording with rather different timings, especially re the final movement which is at a somewhat slower tempo.Originally posted by mahlerei View PostComment
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A short while ago, I listened to Flash Harry's recording of DSCH 9 and thought it was very good indeed - excellent sound quality, too.Comment
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[QUOTE=Bryn;542774]Hmm. Are you sure it's what it says it is? ...
Bryn: you'll see that the words "Google Play" and "iTunes" are in blue, so they are 'advertising' links ... ie: if you click either or both of them, You Tube takes you to the Kitayenko recording, complete with its own CD cover for verification. This happens a lot on You Tube where someone might upload a recording that may not be available for downloading. In those cases, a mechanical device kicks in which links you to the same piece of music but in a quite different recording. I'm assuming the Rozhdestvensky isn't available on iTunes, though I haven't check for sure.Comment
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I'm now wondering which one I've been sampling...Originally posted by Bryn View Post
The 'cover' depicted on Apple Music is this one
but the sound quality is disappointingly like a bootleg tape from the back of the hall.
In contrast, the Rozhdestvensky/USSRMCSO version of No 7 sounds terrific...
... with this uneasy-making cover art
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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Try the YouTube offering linked to by Seabright. It's much better.Originally posted by Caliban View PostI'm now wondering which one I've been sampling...
The 'cover' depicted on Apple Music is this one
but the sound quality is disappointingly like a bootleg tape from the back of the hall.
In contrast, the Rozhdestvensky/USSRMCSO version of No 7 sounds terrific...
... with this uneasy-making cover art
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I did... and it is!Originally posted by Bryn View Post
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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The opus number doesn't exactly do much to redeem it, does it?(!)...Originally posted by Caliban View PostI'm now wondering which one I've been sampling...
The 'cover' depicted on Apple Music is this one
but the sound quality is disappointingly like a bootleg tape from the back of the hall.Comment
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At first, all seems fine with Barshai's DSCH 9. If I miss the startling dynamic contrasts Kondrashin draws from his side-drummer in the first movement, the pacing, bass-power and disciplined brilliance of the WDR reading still compel my attention. But into the moderato Barshai sounds rather brusque, and those teasing we're-coming-to-get-you string phrases (after 1'55 in Barshai) just plod along, rhythmically four-square; Kondrashin, with his soulful, keen-edged Moscow violins, is slower, slinkier, subtly songful, finding that creeping sense of menace in this darkest of fairytales.
Barshai's Presto, again, is technically sharp but blandly voiced; Kondrashin's winds are soon squealing with false hilarity. But then, with the WDR's intensely eloquent bassoon solo in the Largo - I felt a rapprochement with Barshai's reading: an individual, sorrowful song. Perhaps the best thing in this performance, but it still can't match the lugubrious, slightly tipsy Russian-ness, the wailing lament against snarling brass of Kondrashin's charcterisation; it sounds like a mock-Liturgy served by doleful Kafkaesque executioners. Then the mood softly swings: the slavonic-poetic texture - character and colour, at the movement's end is extraordinary, as those strings bow their heads to the bassoon's final, baleful phrases. The music breathes out of them like a mist. It would seem impossible to reproduce this on a Western-European orchestra.
Barshai concludes the 9th Symphony very strongly, especially in encouraging his violins to sprint away on tiptoe from beneath the swaggering march, without pause; the climax of the movement itself is as hubristic as the shallowest tyrant. And yet, and yet.... the first part of this allegretto is still rather straight and literal, the winds just after 3'00 a bit anonymous. When Kondrashin's strings first take up the bassoon's theme there's a nervy spring-in-their-step, and sudden dynamic swells intensify individual notes and phrases; the approach to the swaggering climax becomes quite terrifying, the tension unbearably wound up - but Kondrashin only opens it out a little at the arrival of the march itself - the music moves more naturally, more symphonic than parodistic; but wait a minute - the coda itself is truly throwaway - dispatched with a scruffy unconcern, further underlined by by the too-abrupt cut-off of the studio resonance!
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Reviewing an earlier issue of Kondrashin's set, David Gutman commented in the Gramophone (11/94) :"[Rozhdestvensky's and Kondrashin's] interpretations have a tonal weight and sarcastic intent that cannot fail to shock the uninitiated, but Kondrashin's is the finest of all."
Shostakovich himself commented in rehearsal with KK that "he's terrible to work with: just when I've made a note of something, I find he's already doing it".
I'll have to wait a few days for a 2ndhand CD to arrive before experiencing Rozh's take on it; but hearing KK once again just confirms my feeling about the meaning of this music inhering in the very sounds of Russian orchestras themselves...Last edited by jayne lee wilson; 22-02-16, 15:52.Comment
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I think someone in the engineering department must have dipped into this forum and noticed my comment about the far-too-low levels for the BAL Shostakovich 9th music examples and also for Breakfast. This morning they are noticeably higher on Breakfast and sound all the better for it!Originally posted by Stanfordian View PostComment
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Yes, but "' ... the richest recordings of classical music ever made.' ITN" - if Trevor MacDonald says it is, who are we to disagree?Originally posted by ahinton View Post[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]Comment
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JLW, thanks for your input, as usual! :) I think I better investigate Kondrashin?Don’t cry for me
I go where music was born
J S Bach 1685-1750Comment
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Rob Cowen has just referred to the Ninth Symphony as being "Opus 7"! (Presumably making the First "Opus minus two"?)Originally posted by ahinton View Post[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]Comment
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