Camille SaintSaens Pyotr Il039yich Tchaikovsky Max Bruch - Tchaikovsky SaintSans Bruch Cello Works +Album Reviews

Questions and reservations

P. SIMPSON | North Yorkshire, United Kingdom | 07/23/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"First, the performances. They're very good, without being the best. Wisplewey's tone, whilst strong and clean, is not as warm as Rostropovich in the Tchaikovsky (on DG with the Dvorak concerto) nor as affectionate as Ma in the Saint Saens. The orchestra is somewhat teutonic, too, rather than gallic, and this tells, particularly in the Saint Saens, which can take that treatment, but which does give up a bit more to a sympathetic (not necessarily French) orchestra and conductor. The Bruch is lovely, very songful, but the Tchaikovsky Andante, whilst affecting is also a bit affected, with an almost lugubrious tempo (but with dry sound). Overall there's a feeling of both engagament and cleanness - hard to pull off, with some marvellous cello playing, but it still left me feeling a bit short changed for real warmth. The recording too is a mixed bag. I rarely use balance controls (and never tone) but I found the cello too right-of-centre for me in the Saint Saens. The recording the Decca engineers gave Lynn Harrell in this piece in the early 80's was just about perfect (and still sounds great). Adjusting the balance to get the middle and upper registers focussed towards centre (I prefer solo cello just marginally to centre left, where it can contrast with the violins) meant, however, that the lower registers drifted away off left. Those middle and upper registers are marvellously caught, with some stratospheric higher notes, but I was a bit disconcerted by the lower registers, not just because of the leftward drift, but because the recording became bass heavy in the last three works (and yes, I know that all four were recorded in the same place on the same day, - i can't explain it other than that my ears getting run in.) It feels like the engineers confused reverberation with warmth, and the two aren't the same. Nonetheless, there are some breathtaking and always clear sounds from Wilspelwey's instrument. Surprisingly, having said that about the cello sound, I found some bass orchestral passages muffled, and kept wishing the percussion would come out from behind the curtains. Even some upper register sounds were lost, e.g. from the harpist in the Bruch. Then again, the recording is absolutely breathtaking when woodwinds and violins combine, as in the Tchaikovsky, - with a lovely tone but with great clarity.After several listens I still feel confused by both performance and sound. Maybe multi-channel rather than 2-channel will resolve some of the balance and reverberation issues but in the meantime I suspect I'll play the alternatives listed above more frequently than this one, impressive though it is."

Excellent and warm recording of the Saint Saens concerto.

Hany Aziz | 11/16/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Excellent and warm recording of the Saint Saens concerto. Very well recorded with a warm but realistic sound of the cello. The Rococco variations are also excellent but not stellar. I would recommend this as the bst recording I have heard of the Saint Saens on SACD or CD (over readings by Du Pre, Starker and others)."

Quite posibly the most beautiful recording I have ever heard

Kenneth S Burns Jr | Florence, SC United States | 02/27/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The title says it all! This is currently my favorite disk. The playing is flawless. The sound quality in multichannel SACD mode is out of this world. The disk is hybrid so you can listen in your truck. The music is timeless. I could go on and on.....just buy it and listen because words do not do it justice. You will not regret buying this SACD."

Enjoyable but not quite the best

Lawrence A. Schenbeck | Atlanta, GA USA | 05/17/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I purchased this recording only recently, based on the enthusiastic recommendation by Andrew Quint in The Absolute Sound. It's very enjoyable, and I am sure I will listen to it many times over the next few years. The repertoire is tuneful, timbre-rich, and very expressive -- Romantic music for a most romantic instrument indeed! I have other Pieter Wispelwey discs and am a great admirer of his artistry.

That said, I doubt if this disc is the best representation of Mr. Wispelwey out there, or that it represents what Channel Classics recording and engineering is now capable of. (It was recorded in 2000, using a "24 Bit Prism/Genex" digital converter, which implies that it may not have originated as a DSD capture.) To my ears the sound is just a bit tubby and oversmooth -- qualities we may someday refer to "early hi-rez" or "early DSD." Certainly Channel Classics have shown with their later releases that they can produce cleaner, more detailed recordings without losing any of the three-dimensionality and continuity that DSD enables.

As to the performances, as enjoyable as they are, they fall slightly short of the greatest examples of these pieces on disc. Listening to the "Kol Nidrei," I remembered that I also own a reissue of Gregor Piatigorsky's 1947 Columbia recording with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. So I pulled it out. It was not surprising to find that Piatigorsky evokes the emotion, the throbbing cantorial vocalization of the cello line with more assurance than Wispelwey -- it's probably cruel to compare the work of any living cellist with that of Piatigorsky in this piece! Likewise the final third, in which the orchestra comes into play as an equal partner to the soloist, is more effective with Ormandy urging along everyone at a slightly faster pace: because of that quickened but still lyrical tempo, we can feel this section as a release, a satisfying postlude to what came before.

Going back to Wispelwey, I was surprised at how effective his own gentler, softer-edged treatment really was. It is still expressive, still musically solid. On this disc however, Wispelwey is probably at his best in the Tchaikovsky "Rococo Variations." His background in early music allows him to savor and impart the delicacy and delight in ornament, etc., that this score emphasizes. Likewise his interpretation of the Saint-Saens concerto brings out its classical qualities; again, compare it with Piatigorsky (whose 1940 recording, with Stock and the Chicago Symphony, is on that same Masterworks Heritage reissue) if you want to hear a true Romantic engaged in a friendly duel with those classical elements. One wonders what Wispelwey would have done here if he had been able to work with a conductor (the very fine Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen appears to have been led from the concertmaster's chair by Daniel Sepec). In a conducted performance, the soloist can (ironically) feel freer to depart from the main tempo, and the conductor can likewise get the orchestra to push and pull at crucial points.

In short, well worth having. But don't stop with these interpretations. Acquire more Wispelwey, and listen to others in this repertoire."

Beautiful music ... astounding technology

John L. Anderson | Lynchburg, VA United States | 01/25/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"SACD is the wave of the future in music recordings ... period. Buy this recording, pop it in your SACD player and sit back as multichannel stereo flows forth. The quality of the sound, the quality of the particular production, the quality of the recording all are excellent. With this particular recording, it's as though you're sitting in the middle of the recording booth, right there with the performers as they make the music. The warmth and immediacy of the sound is simply incredible. SACD will also make traditional CDs come back to life. Now, if only ...would make SACDs easier to find on the Web site with a hot link as they've done with the competing, but inferior, DVD-Audio."

Search - Camille Saint-Saens, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Max Bruch :: Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, Bruch: Cello Works [Hybrid SACD]

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	Camille Saint-Saens, Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Max Bruch Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, Bruch: Cello Works [Hybrid SACD] Genre: Classical
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