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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Scriabinmahler
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is one of the most memorable recordings Simon Rattle made with City of Birmingham SO. Apollo is beautifully played with plenty of atmosphere and imagination. The Rite of Spring is incredibly powerful. The glorious sound of brass and woodwind adds vivid colours in contrast to the earth-shattering percussions. The slow sections are beautifully crafted with careful attention to detail. The sound quality is amazingly realistic with huge dynamic range.
DDD Stereo 1987/88
DDD Stereo 1987/88
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This is one of my least favourite performances of the seminal piece "The Rite of Spring". (Let's be honest, "Apollo" as a piece isn't even worth listening to.)
There is no doubt that the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is a virtuosic ensemble. Just listen to "Dance of the Earth"; they are stunning, to a person. Actually, the entire orchestra is just incredible.
It's Simon Rattle who is not up to scratch. His conducting is lacklustre, staid, limp, stilting. Let it not be said that this is not an individual performance. Let it also be said that thank god such performances ARE individual. The piece is so idiosyncratic that it seems only said conductor and a few others may be enjoying it. I did not. Tempi seem to be unusually chosen for the sake of individuality and some idiosyncratic reasoning. The recording itself is also unbright and top-light. The acoustic is absolutely dull to the point of being dead. I won't be listening to it much.
(Compare Boulez with the Cleveland Orchestra on Sony, not the Deutsche Gramophon version.)
There is no doubt that the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is a virtuosic ensemble. Just listen to "Dance of the Earth"; they are stunning, to a person. Actually, the entire orchestra is just incredible.
It's Simon Rattle who is not up to scratch. His conducting is lacklustre, staid, limp, stilting. Let it not be said that this is not an individual performance. Let it also be said that thank god such performances ARE individual. The piece is so idiosyncratic that it seems only said conductor and a few others may be enjoying it. I did not. Tempi seem to be unusually chosen for the sake of individuality and some idiosyncratic reasoning. The recording itself is also unbright and top-light. The acoustic is absolutely dull to the point of being dead. I won't be listening to it much.
(Compare Boulez with the Cleveland Orchestra on Sony, not the Deutsche Gramophon version.)
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars
3 reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ripe
18 Mar 2009
By David Saemann
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
The Rite of Spring was one of Rattle's early warhorses. He first recorded it in analogue sound with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. What we have here is Rattle's 2nd version of the work. It is a very good performance, dramatic, scrupulously detailed, and with a wide dynamic range. I do miss some of the pungency that a more virtuosic orchestra than the Birmingham can offer. My first Rite of Spring, on cassette, was the Boulez with George Szell's Cleveland Orchestra (which I now have on an excellent CD), a performance of absolutely spine-tingling virtuosity. Nevertheless, one of the plusses of Rattle's rendition is that it is recorded in beautifully balanced sound with a wide but natural dynamic range, which makes the strong moments of Rattle's interpretation that much more effective. What I can't stint on my praise of is Rattle's performance of Apollo. British orchestras have an almost innate understanding of beautifully balanced string sound, and that is exactly what we get here. Rattle's interpretation is subtle and exquisitely modulated. This is the most enjoyable Apollo I've heard since Colin Davis's on LP, and the sound engineering here is warm and detailed. So, on balance, this is a Stravinsky disc well worth having, even if Rattle, in Sacre, is not exactly Pierre Monteux.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Apollo is too pastel, but Le sacre gets a clear, cogent reading
8 Jan 2009
By Santa Fe Listener
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD
I am in sympathy with almost everything the previous reviewer says, both on the positive and negative side. Rattle's young Birmingham musicians can't compete internationally for technique, but he worked wonders with what he had. The coupling of one of Stravinsky's less-played ballets with his most famous one is canny. When Rattle first appeared on the scene, a decade after Stravinsky's death, England was still a wasteland for the composer's works beyond the top four or five most popular scores. (Can you think of Sargent, Boult, or Barbirolli doing any Stravinsky?)
Rattle's way with Apollo is sauve and overly fussy in its details, unable to find a driving reason for the music to reach our ears. The score is among the most pure and pristine of Stravinsky's major neo-classical works, so it's a challenge to make it work without Balanchine's choreography. Even so, Rattle's reading is too pastel.
I wondered what strategy he would adopt for Le sacre, which has become a showpiece for virtuosic display. Leading a second-tier orchestra, Rattle can't compete with the blockbuster versions that litter the landscape, and stylistically he's crowded out by Bernstein, Boulez, and Monteux -- between them, they color Le sacre about as many ways as one might imagine, while sitll leaving room for Gergiev and Salonen. In the end, Rattle settles for careful detail (one of his trademarks), sharp contours here and there, and an overall smoothness that is at odds with the screaming romp of Muti, for example. Like Colin Davis and Haitink, he wants the music to sound cogent. Such an approach is at odds with the composer himself, whose Le sacre on Sony is biting, fierce, and harrowing. But Rattle leans on the dissonances when he can, and his rhythms are propulsive without being hectic.
It would be unfair to call this a veddy British version of Stravinsky. Rattle's style is articulate, clean, and vital yet not highly memorable.
Rattle's way with Apollo is sauve and overly fussy in its details, unable to find a driving reason for the music to reach our ears. The score is among the most pure and pristine of Stravinsky's major neo-classical works, so it's a challenge to make it work without Balanchine's choreography. Even so, Rattle's reading is too pastel.
I wondered what strategy he would adopt for Le sacre, which has become a showpiece for virtuosic display. Leading a second-tier orchestra, Rattle can't compete with the blockbuster versions that litter the landscape, and stylistically he's crowded out by Bernstein, Boulez, and Monteux -- between them, they color Le sacre about as many ways as one might imagine, while sitll leaving room for Gergiev and Salonen. In the end, Rattle settles for careful detail (one of his trademarks), sharp contours here and there, and an overall smoothness that is at odds with the screaming romp of Muti, for example. Like Colin Davis and Haitink, he wants the music to sound cogent. Such an approach is at odds with the composer himself, whose Le sacre on Sony is biting, fierce, and harrowing. But Rattle leans on the dissonances when he can, and his rhythms are propulsive without being hectic.
It would be unfair to call this a veddy British version of Stravinsky. Rattle's style is articulate, clean, and vital yet not highly memorable.
4.0 out of 5 stars
'Le Sacre' Reiew #7/Rattle-Birmingham (EMI): ALMOST!!
6 Aug 2012
By 21st Century Reviews
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Audio CD
Rattle compares favorably all around, pretty much. Playing ability must be the limitation here, but, otherwise, the sound is really good, and Rattle pushes hard. At every turn, though, Rattle must yield to someone else's recorded performance: there are just not enough (more, Simon,... MORE!!) individual moments to save the entire production from falling into forgetfulness. Which is a shame, because there is so much to like here. I'll say it's in the Top20. If Rattle's your weak link, you're doing o.k.!
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4.3 out of 5 stars
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