Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
STUPENDOUS, 5 Sep 2001
By A Customer
A really first rate recording of a neglected Russian masterpiece, a sprawling epic of a score that evokes the mythological world of one Ilya Muromets, a larger than life hero from Russian fiction. Blousy, big, brassy, expansive and astonishingly inventive melodically, Gliere's score grabs one by the scruff of the neck and drags one through an astonishing orchestral soundscape, the likes of which you've probably never heard before. The third movement, entitled 'Nightingale The Robber', is a gorgeously prolonged Andante that winds its way though a magical soundscape that is somewhat reminiscent of Wagner's 'Forest Murmurs', but in my view, an infinitely more intoxicating vision of a mythic forest. What sumptuous strings, what rasping brass, what breath-taking climaxes! The whole work in fact is a forgotten masterwork - Reinhold Gliere was a genius!
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favourite CD, 3 Dec 2003
This is a great recording. Gliere paints a picture filled with heroic battles and glorious victories (and deaths), and the BBC Phil do an outstanding job. The sound is first-rate, with superb brass playing all round. This music is passionate in the extreme, from the slow and moving opening through aching intensity in the slow movement to the mother of all battles in the finale. It's unashamedly romantic music which sounds like Scriabin, Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov all wrapped up together. This has to be my favourite CD!!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Evocative and lushly orchestrated tone-poems from Russia, 2 Jun 2009
Although I had been familiar with Gliere and had maintained an interest in pre-Revolutionary Russian music from my youth, somehow this monumental symphony had always eluded me. I was finally motivated recently to purchase it - and I can only second much of the enthusiasm of the earlier reviewers on here.
Despite the four movement plan, you'll look in vain for a traditional symphony here. It is more like a quartet of Lisztian symphonic poems, with some cyclical interlinking of motifs and themes. The closest, well-known example I can compare it to is Sibelius' `Lemminkainen' Suite - though Gliere's work is more diffuse structurally and less memorable melodically than that marvellous Finnish classic.
It's a long piece and a gorgeous wallow in descriptive and atmospheric tone painting, decked in colourful orchestral garb: Gliere's imagination for sonorities really is something to wonder at, whether he aims for grandeur, delicacy or sensuality. As one reviewer has already pointed out, the second movement - subtitled, `Nightingale the Robber' - is quite exquisite, from the eerie string figures that open it to the alluring cantilenas in the central section, adorned by beautiful evocations of birdsong. In a recent review I was sceptical about the influence of Scriabin on Gliere's symphonic poem `The Sirens', but the orchestral writing and the harmonies in parts of this movement have made me reconsider Gliere's openness to more modern currents in the music of his time.
Edward Downes conducts a perfectly judged (and beautifully played by all concerned) performance: taut where he needs to be, given Gliere's sometimes prolix movements, but also able to relax and let the music breathe in less animated passages. He plays the work complete, without the cuts that some conductors have felt the need to introduce.
The sound quality is wonderful too. I'm not always a fan of the Chandos `house sound' and can find it too mellow and soft-focus - to the detriment of detail, particularly in late-Romantic orchestral works. I needn't have had any worries about this recording, however: every detail here is admirably clear and the bass registers are cleanly delineated and appropriately solid.
If you like late-Romantic music or programme music, you'll probably thoroughly enjoy this evocative musical version of a Russian legend. Definitely recommended - from the point of view of music, performance and recording quality.
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