|
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fine performances but over-close sound, 27 Mar 2005
Gramophone and the Good Cd guide rate this disc very highly. I can agree so far as operformances are concerned, but this is another Pentatone disc which is let down by over-close sound.Christian Tetzlaff, Nikolai Lugansky and Kent Nagano are reliable and trusted interpreters. Their performances are certainly reliable and trustworthy, but that won't quite do in these concertos, which need the magic of a Kyung Wha Chung (Decca) in the Violin C'to or the panache of a Marta Argerich (piano) to really take off. Even underneath the close sound, those characteristics aren't present - at least I don't think they are. The Russian National Orchestra under Pletnev has made some superb-sounding discs for Virgin and even DG (whose sound I don't normally like). You wouldn't know it was the same orchestra here. The recording venue doesn't help. The Moscow Conservatory Concert Hall is just too big and blousy for the music. It should have been an appropriate sound for "big" Tchaikovsky but Polyhymnia's engineering doesn't let us hear too much of any kind of acoustic. What it does let us hear is a heck of a lot of low-level sub vocalisation, or is it some kind of surround-echo (??) almost constantly throughout the two pieces. And a lot of very close, over-centred orchestral and instrumental sounds. At times Tetzlaff's violin is recorded so closely that it sounds scrawny, which isn't like him (on other records). At others the closeness has the effect of making his violin very forceful but relatively unsubtle. He's also so close that, in a too-centred recording, his violin takes up almost all the left speaker, from centre through to extreme left. Totally unnatural. The piano's opening chords are completely stripped of any resonance or warmth. They die the minute they're born. Whilst strings can soar, they don't soar very high, - instead, they tend to soar very, very close. That can sound impressive but to my ears doesn't sound at all warm or especially musical. Timpani and other instruments sound close and clear but are cut-off from any warm resonance by the closeness of the miking. When there is resonance it tends to be very short and sudden rather than anything which genuinely resounds, even in surround. Bear in mind that this is a personal gripe and obviously other listeners won't feel it to the same extent, but I want to hear music live and breathe, not thump and die. UPDATE AND ADDITION: Erdo Groot, Pentatone's balance engineer has sent a very informative and helpful response to this review. His comments are reproduced below. "Coming back to some of your judgments of Tchaikovsky concerto and serenade disk. I can assure you the microphones were not very close to the soloist and orchestra, and listening again yesterday at the importer of Quad on 5 of the big electrostatic speakers, I could hear none of the low end reflections you mention nor a shrillness or harshness in tone of Tetzlaff and very natural and 'warm', if not over resonant, string sound in the orchestra, with clear acoustic signature of the hall around the direct sound.
|
~ Ludwig van Beethoven
~ Gerald Finley
![Verdi: Messa da Requiem [Hybrid SACD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51695CE1RML._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
~ Ildebrando D'Arcangelo
~ Antonin Dvorak
by Chris Mullin
![Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto; Piano Concerto No. 1 [Hybrid SACD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WZP5HJ8YL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home