BaL 1.04.23 - Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances

[jayne lee wilson]

Is there anything Roth isn't going to record - both with Les Siecles and the LSO and other orchestras his ubiquity is becoming Karajanesque.

Hmmm.... he just isn't ambitious enough. Too many one-offs - surefire hits and orchestral display pieces. What about a real challenge, say the Complete Roussel Symphonies?
Terrific Beethoven 3 and 5, I'll give him that. The Ligeti was a good idea, if a slightly whimsical selection.... Debussy Pelleas rather more like it... how about Moses und Aaron?

Anyway, it's time to hear Jansons and the BRSO in the current subject....

[jonfan]

There are many great recordings of this piece, it seems to bring the best out of everyone.
I have the Petrenko with the RLPO but I keep coming back to Ashkenazy as a bench mark; I first collected it as a very early CD - the reverberation of the bass drum shook the whole house.
I feel Rachmaninov was drawing strands of his life together in this piece - as well as his frequent use of the Dies Irae he quotes from the First Symphony, then unissued and unknown, and from the All Night Vespers, a work he thought one if his finest compositions. (He wanted the Nunc dimittis to be sung at his funeral but I believe no choir was capable of doing so at the time).
Rachmaninov indicates the final tam-tam crash to reverberate after the rest of the orchestra has stopped - a thrilling final flourish for the composer. It’s often spoilt in live performances by enthusiastic audiences.

[Lordgeous]

Don't some conductors insist on it being damped quickly - to make a better ending? Hurwitz discusses this.

[Bryn]

Don't some conductors insist on it being damped quickly - to make a better ending? Hurwitz discusses this.

"Hurwitz discusses this", so it may be apocryphal.

[gradus]

Maazel/BPO amongst others damps it but I prefer it sounding out, per Jurowski/LPO.

[jonfan]

Don't some conductors insist on it being damped quickly - to make a better ending? Hurwitz discusses this.

Better ending!! Rachmaninov knew how he wanted his piece to end. The score is very clear and easy to look up on IMSLP. The Tam-Tam part three bars from the end is marked laisser viber . The final bar has everyone else finish on a quaver whereas the Tam-Tam has a dotted crotchet. In my collection Ashkenazy cuts it short whereas Petrenko allows the Tam-Tam sound to die away naturally as the composer asked for.

[Lordgeous]

Indeed!

[jayne lee wilson]

Better ending!! Rachmaninov knew how he wanted his piece to end. The score is very clear and easy to look up on IMSLP. The Tam-Tam part three bars from the end is marked laisser viber . The final bar has everyone else finish on a quaver whereas the Tam-Tam has a dotted crotchet. In my collection Ashkenazy cuts it short whereas Petrenko allows the Tam-Tam sound to die away naturally as the composer asked for.

But......Rob Cowan, commenting extensively on the matter, had this to say in his G-Collection piece....

"....it's worth pointing out that the [laisser vibrer] marking doesn't apply to the final gong stroke but the one that strikes ff two bars before - in other words the first of three. So you could say the jury is permanent out on this particular issue."

Which you can see clearly on the youtube score video too. Personally, I find it works well damped or slow-fade (as we bate our breath), according to the individual flair, conviction and resolved detail of the given recording. Nor is it necessarily a binary choice, given the varying length of that last fading resonance or the brusqueness of the cut-off.

In other words..... it's a question of - interpretation.

[rauschwerk]

Ormandy gave the first performance, and the composer was present at at least one rehearsal. In his recording, he only lets the tam-tam reverberate on the stroke marked 'laissez vibrer'. I regard that as authentic, but must admit that letting the last stroke ring is very effective!

[smittims]

I agree with Jayne. One may say laisser vibrer, but for how long? It doesn't necessarily mean 'until inaudibility'.

I remember James Blades beginning a talk on percussion with a still-vibrating tam-tam which he said 'was struck several minutes ago'. So it could get a bit tedious. I prefer a tactful damping after a few seconds.

[Bryn]

I agree with Jayne. One may say laisser vibrer, but for how long? It doesn't necessarily mean 'until inaudibility'.

I remember James Blades beginning a talk on percussion with a still-vibrating tam-tam which he said 'was struck several minutes ago'. So it could get a bit tedious. I prefer a tactful damping after a few seconds.

Hmm, certainly of different import to Messiaen's "jusqu'a l'extinction du son" in Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum an instruction which Boulez failed to respect in his Clevland recording of the work, though he observed it well enough in the earlier Erato/CBS recording.

[smittims]

Yes, I think it's more appropriate in the Messiaen than in the Rachmaninov .

[jayne lee wilson]

Within a few bars of the Bavarian Radio SO/Jansons 2017 recording (BR Klassik CD/Qobuz 24/48) you know this is special. Wonderful weight, presence and detail and unlike some Western European efforts, an expressive warmth and flexibility into the second group, with an almost Russian song and soul in the sax. Jansons recalls the 1st Symphony with tender, touching wistfulness.

Returning to the first Ashkenazy (of three, including the Philharmonia and Sydney SO) on Decca (Qobuz Lossless) with RCOA, and especially after prolonged exposure to the remarkably creative phrase and tempo variabile of three Svetlanovs (1973 Melodiya; 86 (Live, Regis/Melodiya); 1995 Pony Canyon/Exton etc), I was disappointed at how strict and straitlaced it felt; not much rubato or expressive freedom here, for all the inevitable technical excellence of the playing; coolly brusque through an undersold Valse Triste. His RCOA finale is brilliantly fast and virtuosic of course, but still tends to rigidity and can feel rushed (in comparison at least).
Jansons in Munich (the third of three, after St Petersburg and RCOA…a Jansons/Amsterdam vs Ashkenazy/Amsterdam comparison would be interesting…) has greater imagination and flexibility here, and differentiates the structural fast-slow-fast+double coda of the finale more clearly. The Decca recording, a benchmark in its day, also sounds a shade cool, less lustrously realistic than the superb Bavarian production in Munich Herkulesaal (which, with marvellously full and textured strings, has you purring at the SQ from the off). Ashkenazy relaxes more with the later Philharmonia reading, yet still never quite sounds comfortable with the slightly warmer freedoms he allows himself.

So the BRSO/ Jansons ( c/w an even finer The Bells symphony, so it is an exceptional album) gives you everything (and more) technically that Ashkenazy (1) offers in Western European terms, but far more musically. A great one to move on to from the Decca Ashkenazy if that’s still your reference, should you tend to shy away from the classic Russians.

….Which you shouldn’t - they’ll rock your Rachmaninovian World, despite some sonic tolerance required for their earlier vintages. Each time I return to Svetlanov and the USSRSO… that subtle, instinctive, bar-to-bar shift and shade of phrase and tempo, the full, dark, woven-texture strings; scything, waltzing trumpets. Conductor and orchestra love each other; they love their music, too. Unavoidable…a reference, but what of? Ah...myths and images; something deep and dark and lost in the Rachmaninovian Russian Soul; a way of singing.
So, take a listen to Kondrashin (the 1963 wide mono/narrow stereo perspective best heard on the 2005 Melodiya remaster, if still a little glassy tonally) or Svetlanov and see what you hear and think. For Svetlanov himself though, it has to be the later one, on Pony Canyon or Exton CDs (the Complete Rachmaninov Symphony set), for stunning sound and sheer musical audacity, authority, and devil-may-care creative freedom.

*****
But I still haven't heard - Paavo Järvi with the Orchestre de Paris (Salle Pleyel Live c/w Symphony No.3/The Rock, etc./Erato 24/48 (2015), Qobuz). Which was Rob Cowan’s top choice for Gramophone Collection….

Later that night....

....Well, now I have…. and it is exceptional….remarkable…every single detail really tells.... in some of the richest and most colourful sound I’ve ever heard accorded to the piece. In recording quality and musical expressiveness, orchestral freedom and discipline, effortless power, individuality and sheer presence…. outside of Russian Orchestras, and even up against them, this truly stands out: so powerfully sweet, so seriously playful...! Absolutely wonderful live recording, in every way. Wow!

[smittims]

I think you ought to be dong BaL, Jayne. You'd liven it up.

[Barbirollians]

Within a few bars of the Bavarian Radio SO/Jansons 2017 recording (BR Klassik CD/Qobuz 24/48) you know this is special. Wonderful weight, presence and detail and unlike some Western European efforts, an expressive warmth and flexibility into the second group, with an almost Russian song and soul in the sax. Jansons recalls the 1st Symphony with tender, touching wistfulness.

Returning to the first Ashkenazy (of three, including the Philharmonia and Sydney SO) on Decca (Qobuz Lossless) with RCOA, and especially after prolonged exposure to the remarkably creative phrase and tempo variabile of three Svetlanovs (1973 Melodiya; 86 (Live, Regis/Melodiya); 1996 Pony Canyon/Exton etc), I was disappointed at how strict and straitlaced it felt; not much rubato or expressive freedom here, for all the inevitable technical excellence of the playing; coolly brusque through an undersold Valse Triste. His RCOA finale is brilliantly fast and virtuosic of course, but still tends to rigidity and can feel rushed (in comparison at least).
Jansons in Munich (the third of three, after St Petersburg and RCOA…a Jansons/Amsterdam vs Ashkenazy/Amsterdam comparison would be interesting…) has greater imagination and flexibility here, and differentiates the structural fast-slow-fast+double coda of the finale more clearly. The Decca recording, a benchmark in its day, also sounds a shade cool, less lustrously realistic than the superb Bavarian production in Munich Herkulesaal (which, with marvellously full and textured strings, has you purring at the SQ from the off). Ashkenazy relaxes more with the later Philharmonia reading, yet still never quite sounds comfortable with the slightly warmer freedoms he allows himself.

So the BRSO/ Jansons ( c/w an even finer The Bells symphony, so it is an exceptional album) gives you everything (and more) technically that Ashkenazy (1) offers in Western European terms, but far more musically. A great one to move on to from the Decca Ashkenazy if that’s still your reference, should you tend to shy away from the classic Russians.

….Which you shouldn’t - they’ll rock your Rachmaninovian World, despite some sonic tolerance required for their earlier vintages. Each time I return to Svetlanov and the USSRSO… that subtle, instinctive, bar-to-bar shift and shade of phrase and tempo, the full, dark, woven-texture strings; scything, waltzing trumpets. Conductor and orchestra love each other; they love their music, too. Unavoidable…a reference, but what of? Ah...myths and images; something deep and dark and lost in the Rachmaninovian Russian Soul; a way of singing.
So, take a listen to Kondrashin (the 1963 wide mono/narrow stereo perspective best heard on the 2005 Melodiya remaster, if still a little glassy tonally) or Svetlanov and see what you hear and think. For Svetlanov himself though, it has to be the later one, on Pony Canyon or Exton CDs (the Complete Rachmaninov Symphony set), for stunning sound and sheer musical audacity, authority, and devil-may-care creative freedom.

*****
But I still haven't heard - Paavo Järvi with the Orchestre de Paris (Salle Pleyel Live c/w Symphony No.3/The Rock, etc./Erato 24/48 (2015), Qobuz). Which was Rob Cowan’s top choice for Gramophone Collection….

Later that night....


....Well, now I have…. and it is exceptional….remarkable…every single detail really tells.... in some of the richest and most colourful sound I’ve ever heard accorded to the piece. In recording quality and musical expressiveness, orchestral freedom and discipline, effortless power, individuality and sheer presence…. outside of Russian Orchestras, and even up against them, this truly stands out: so powerfully sweet, so seriously playful...! Absolutely wonderful live recording, in every way. Wow!

I only have Previn on cassette but still my favourite I think though I have soft spots for Mackerras and Ormandy too .

I must listen to YNS's recording again - his Rachmaninov 1 was as Gramophone suggested very fine but I do not really recall the performance of the Symphonic Dances .