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Comments from members

	katherat posted 69 days ago
TELDEC DDD 1995 4 tracks 45:27

Customer Reviews

An average performance of an extraordinary symphony

Rating: 3/5

I was struck while listening to this recording how many ordinary readings there are of this symphony. This is one of them. There's little that's wrong here, but also little that's right, as Rostropovich, one of my favorite cellists but never one of my favorite conductors, walks us through a very middle-of-the-road performance. Tempi are average, around the same as Haitink's in his wonderful 1983 recording with the Concertgebouw on London/Decca. But while Haitink knows how to emphasize key parts of architecture through a scrupulous attention to phrasing, dynamics, and balances, Rosty just glances over these moments. In the first movement intro, for example, there are wonderful moments that foreshadow things to come in the development. Here they barely get noticed. The scherzo isn't as sarcastic as I'd like, and the articulation is muddy. (These go hand-in-hand, actually, as the fussy phrasing is what leads to a lot of the bite and sarcasm.) The third movement is too fast for a largo (for a truly harrowing largo, listen to Kurt Sanderling with the Berlin Symphony) and Rostropovich flies through the epic climax, one of the greatest in the symphonic literature in my opinion. (Where's the majesty?) The desolation in the middle wind solos is missing as well. The finale also lacks menace and bite, as well as that manic quality as episode crashes into episode and patriotic fervor rises and becomes jingoism; there's none of Haitink's or Mravinsky's desperation in the middle section. It's hard for me to tell what he means in the coda, if anything. He just seems to be conducting notes. This is so ironic from one who as a cellist is so endlessly expressive and fluid. This recording is in many ways the opposite of Lenny's, which emphasized everything in day-glo colors. For me Haitink, Svetlanov and the composer's own son Maxim come closest to realizing the elusive architecture of this piece, while Haitink reads the emotional part best and has the benefit of an unbelievably responsive orchestra. Buy that one instead of this for an interpretation in the same vein.