Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Apocalyptic Performance of Poem of Ecstasy, 20 Feb 2008
As you can imagine from this heavy weight conductor, Scheherazade is played very slowly and passionately, but music itself does not impress me very much, and Royal Festival Hall's acoustics is dreadful. It sounds as if played in a small house build with cardboard boxes although recorded stereo in 1978. I bought this cd only for Scriabin's Poem of ecstasy after reading good review on Amazon.com. It turned out to be truly apocalyptic performance, if not best interpretation.
I think the best performance of the work by Svetlanov is his 1990 version recorded originally by Russian company, but unfortunately recording engineers made mess of it by setting recording level too high from the begining, not realising the enormity of dynamics to anticipate. When the music reaches final climax, more than half of the sound is gone muffled by terrible breaking distortion noise. What a shame! It could have been quite an event in recording industry history! (the same tragedy happened to Ormandy's RCA recording of Resurrection Symphony. The greatest performance of the symphony ruined by recording engineers!).
Back to this BBC Legend recording, recorded live in 1968(stereo), Royal Albert Hall, thankfully the enormous climax is captured well. This is probably Svetlanov's fastest rendition of Ecstasy, only 20 minutes including applause. So it's relatively free from over-exaggeration and does not drag like his later recordings in the 90s. I can imagine it must have been quite an experience to listen to this live in the place. It sounds as if Svetlanov was determined to make the dome of Albert Hall burst out open by the music!
If you can approve this interpretation, there's even more outrageously, monstrously apocalyptic recording by Svetlanov on Japanese label, Exton, recorded live in 1996. The recording quality is far better. The release of the recording was said to be prompted by votes from fans. For listeners who can not stand Svetlanov's grandiose style, the famous Philadelphia recording by Muti or Pletnev's DG recording is still unbeatable.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ecstasy indeed., 24 Mar 2008
There's a book around called '1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die'.
Well this performance of Scriabin's 'Poem of Ecstasy' ought to have been included in the book. Recorded at a Prom concert in London's Royal Albert Hall in 1968, it is one of those 'God I wish I had been there' moments. The U.S.S.R. State Symphony Orchestra play absolutely superbly. This was Svetlanov's orchestra and they play for him like an orchestra possessed. Which is what you need in this gorgeous, over-the-top romantic work. The quiet moments are lovingly phrased, the insistent trumpet call is played at just the right level (not too loud, which it is in Svetlanov's studio recording of this work). And it works up to a fabulous, suitably orgasmic, finale. If you don't know the work, there is a sort of false ending, followed by the final great climax. Svetlanov inserts an incredible (unmarked) five second pause before this climax, then treats us to one very long crescendo. Russian orchestras have this knack of always leaving power in reserve, and the piece just keeps on getting louder until you want to scream (despite a bit of compression in the recording). And then the audience do scream. It's incredible.
The BBC recording, despite a bit of compression, captures the occasion well, with surprising detail.
It's a Desert Island disc. Absolutely amazing. A must buy.
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