SACD REVIEWS: RACHMININOV 3/BRUCKNER 7
posted by James Reel
I've gotten about a year behind in posting the reviews I write for Fanfare. I'll try to catch up in the next few weeks, and here's a start: Rachmaninov and Bruckner on SACD.
RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 3; Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini • Denis Matsuev (pn); Valery Gergiev, cond; Mariinsky O • MARIINSKY MAR0505 (SACD: 63:15)
In these two of Rachmaninoff’s most popular works, Denis Matsuev is a more nuanced interpreter than I’d expected from his past work, now taking more care with the phrase-to-phrase tension and release; only one or two passages in the concerto’s third movement are as glib as I’d feared. Still, what most defines Matsuev’s approach is the remarkably accurate rendering of the fastest, most glittering material (in the concerto, by the way, he uses the shorter first-movement cadenza). If your taste runs to virtuosic showmanship in this music, Matsuev’s performance might be satisfactory if it weren’t for the bland orchestral contribution, which suffers from poor recording balance and inattentive work from the podium. Valery Gergiev, as so often these days, is functioning on autopilot; despite Matsuev’s attempts to goad Gergiev into the proper sprit, the early pages of the Paganini Rhapsody lack any trace of the whimsy so evident in, for example, the old Reiner version with Rubinstein. In the concerto, the lower strings are almost inaudible when they take over the melody about a minute into the first movement, leaving the keyboard passagework to dominate in a balance that turns to aural clutter and remains that way through much of the disc. For the concerto, on SACD alone, you’d be better sticking with the classic Cliburn/Kondrashin account on RCA, or, among more recent versions, Volodos/Levine on Sony or, for personality galore, Lang Lang/Temirkanov on Telarc. James Reel
BRUCKNER Symphony No. 7 • Mariss Jansons, cond; Bavarian RSO • BR KLASSIK 403571900100 (SACD: 65:08)
If you believe Bruckner needs to be tamed, this is the disc for you. To his credit, Mariss Jansons does not lose interest in the Seventh Symphony’s small-scale passages, like the quasi-minuet turned quasi-nocturne beginning about six minutes into the first movement. Still, he can’t quite overcome Bruckner’s typical start-and-stop structural problems or his tendency to squander too much time obsessing over the least interesting material, and consequently Jansons doesn’t really succeed in shaping a long-term argument. What Jansons produces instead is a highly professional but neutral delivery of the score in a neutral recording space, with just enough reverb to help bring the music to life without then drowning it in cathedral echo. There are many appealing passages in this performance, such as the dark nobility with an undercurrent of grief in the opening of the second movement, and the firm, extroverted string work in the Scherzo. On the other hand, there’s just not enough swing through the second half of the symphony, and there are times when the brass lines are barely projected. (By the way, Jansons uses the Nowak edition, with the cymbal crash in the Adagio.) Overall, this Jansons account reminds me of Bernard Haitink’s old Bruckner recordings for Philips. Not incidentally, Haitink’s recent remake of the Seventh with the Chicago Symphony is available in surround sound on CSO Resound, and if you like this way of performing Bruckner, Haitink’s performance is more consistently managed and balanced. James Reel
