SACD REVIEWS

posted by James Reel

    Failing to have contributed anything to the latest Tucson Weekly, I point you instead to some Super Audio Compact Disc reviews of mine in the current issue of Fanfare. Poke around in the online archive now, before access becomes restricted to subscribers around the end of the month.
    In this issue, I find favor with an SACD reissue of Paul Paray’s old Detroit Symphony recording of the Symphonie fantastique. It’s characteristic of the conductor: “Paray’s readings were usually a little breathless but unfailingly exciting, and speed did not come at the expense of phrasing, articulation, or pointed rhythm.” Also superb is Colin Davis’s new LSO Má Vlast, which “flows forward in a well paced, carefully balanced, beautifully played, pointedly phrased, altogether first-rate performance.”
    Rather less to my liking are a surround-sound version of one of the big Shostakovich symphonies, and several audiophile organ discs. I say of Mark Wigglesworth’s Shostakovich Eighth, “This is a good performance, if rather English in certain respects not to the score’s best advantage.” Then there’s a Franck organ disc: “Roberta Gary plays Franck like a church organist rather than a concert artist. I don’t intend this to suggest any feebleness or lack of imagination; Franck himself, of course, was a church organist. What I mean is that this veteran organ professor at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music favors rather broad tempos, the better to emphasize the music’s harmonic atmosphere.” It’s perfectly fine, if you like that approach. I’m not so sure about Robert Clark’s two-disc Bach survey: “Robert Clark, organ professor at the University of Michigan 1964–1981 and then director of the organ program at Arizona State University until his retirement in 1998, is certainly no stranger to Bach. ...  He is clearly capable of blending scholarship with musicality, yet on these two discs ... he often seems unduly cautious.” And given the competition, I think Christian Schmitt’s selection of Handel organ concertos is beside the point: “I wish Schmitt would cut loose a bit more; although his playing is up-to-date in terms of performance practice, it’s old-fashioned in its hushed respect for the score.”
    Follow the links to read the complete reviews.