Stravinsky: Le Sacre Du Printemps: Premiere Partie: L'Adoration De La Terre
Stravinsky: Le Sacre Du Printemps: Deuxieme Partie: Le Sacrifice
Debussy: La Mer-Trois Esquisses Symphoniques: De L'Aube A Midi Sur La Mer
Debussy: La Mer-Trois Esquisses Symphoniques: Jeux De Vagues
Debussy: La Mer-Trois Esquisses Symphoniques: Dialogue Du Vent Et De La Mer
Boulez: Notations VII
This selection of 20th-century works is perfectly designed to display a virtuoso orchestra in all its glory. The music glows and glitters with a myriad colors, exploits every imaginable instrumental effect, and offers many... more » solo opportunities to all the principal string and wind players. The program also requires a virtuoso conductor, especially the Stravinsky, with its extraordinary, previously unprecedented rhythmic irregularities, its massed sonorities, its cumulative sense of tension, and its driving, pent-up energy that explodes intermittently. No wonder the 1913 Paris premiere of Printemps caused the most famous riot in musical history and spread Stravinsky's name across the world. Barenboim's performance has enormous sweep and a sort of controlled wildness, with tremendously exciting rhythmic incisiveness, great crashing climaxes, and wonderful wind playing in the lyrical parts. The Debussy, based on fond recollections of childhood summers the composer spent at the seaside, is all color: three almost visual evocations of the glittering water, the sparkling play of the waves and the wind, the glowing sky, and the final glorious sunrise with the violins shimmering above grand brass sonorities. The Boulez is also full of color effects, with glassy, thin sounds, but it seems more like an abstract painting. Composed when he was 21, it was part of a set of 12 very brief piano pieces, which he expanded and orchestrated 30 years later; this one was commissioned and premiered by the Chicago Symphony in 1999. Based on short figures and motives, it is called "Hiératique" and described as formal and stylized; the composer asks that it be played slowly and steadily, but not rigidly. The playing throughout is fabulous. --Edith Eisler« less
This selection of 20th-century works is perfectly designed to display a virtuoso orchestra in all its glory. The music glows and glitters with a myriad colors, exploits every imaginable instrumental effect, and offers many solo opportunities to all the principal string and wind players. The program also requires a virtuoso conductor, especially the Stravinsky, with its extraordinary, previously unprecedented rhythmic irregularities, its massed sonorities, its cumulative sense of tension, and its driving, pent-up energy that explodes intermittently. No wonder the 1913 Paris premiere of Printemps caused the most famous riot in musical history and spread Stravinsky's name across the world. Barenboim's performance has enormous sweep and a sort of controlled wildness, with tremendously exciting rhythmic incisiveness, great crashing climaxes, and wonderful wind playing in the lyrical parts. The Debussy, based on fond recollections of childhood summers the composer spent at the seaside, is all color: three almost visual evocations of the glittering water, the sparkling play of the waves and the wind, the glowing sky, and the final glorious sunrise with the violins shimmering above grand brass sonorities. The Boulez is also full of color effects, with glassy, thin sounds, but it seems more like an abstract painting. Composed when he was 21, it was part of a set of 12 very brief piano pieces, which he expanded and orchestrated 30 years later; this one was commissioned and premiered by the Chicago Symphony in 1999. Based on short figures and motives, it is called "Hiératique" and described as formal and stylized; the composer asks that it be played slowly and steadily, but not rigidly. The playing throughout is fabulous. --Edith Eisler
CD Reviews
Very good. But for GREAT, to back to 1969!
Mark I. Kaufman | Silver Lake, Ohio | 05/07/2005
(4 out of 5 stars)
"When George Szell was appointed Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1946, he sculpted an ensemble that even 35 years after his death remains the most technically proficient orchestra in the history of recorded classical music. Quite simply, this orchestra is so tight and precise that it is easy to forget that one is hearing 100-plus musicians!
However, much of the 20th century repertoire was beyond his intellectual purview. No greater evidence of this is the dreadful Szell/Cleveland Orchestra recording of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.
Enter Pierre Boulez, who seems to understand contemporary music at a cellular level.
Therefore, when a conductor like Boulez is leading an ensemble like the Cleveland Orchestra, the listener will experience such music in a way seemingly impossible with any other orchestra/conductor pairing. Clearly, these musicians love playing for Boulez.
As for this second recording with Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra, it is as one might expect. That is to say, it is very good. Clean, well, conceived, with excellent balance, and for the most part, intelligently paced.
However, it can never be regarded as the definitive recording because of perhaps the most vivid and electrifying recording ever of this work, created in Severance Hall with the Cleveland Orchestra and Boulez in 1969.
The only criticism one might have is that the sound quality is obviously not up to the standards of this DGG digital recording. But the playing on the 1969 CBS recording so precise, so clean, so alive, that even the hardest of hardcore audiophiles, if he or she loves this work, will be taken completely beyond the sound, and into the music.
If I had only one recording of this 20th century masterpiece, it would be with this orchestra and this conductor. But not this recording.
Seek out the 1969 CBS recording, for which a five-star rating is inadequte. Once you hear THAT stunning performance, you will never be satisfied with anything less.
"
Some flaws..
Redgecko | USA | 02/02/2006
(3 out of 5 stars)
"I always find it amazing that record companies, in this case Teldec, don't take the little extra effort to turn a good product into a great one. In this case their error was to not split The Rite of Spring into 11 tracks for each of the subparts like everyone has done (this recording has only two for each of the two main parts) and include liner notes that explain each of the sections. For collectors that already have other versions this may not be a problem, but for novices that are trying to study the music, the omission is unacceptable. Also, the liner notes stink--2 pages total for the 3 pieces and then 3 pages on Barenboim!
"
80 YEARS ON
DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 08/14/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Both Petrushka and the Rite date from 1911, and these performances of them were recorded in 1991. By that date Boulez himself was not in the springtime of his youth, and it may well be, as some comment seems to suggest, that his readings are less incisive than in earlier days. Myself, I am not even fully convinced that this is the case, and even if it is the compensations seem to me more than to make up for it. These readings are less strident than some, and there is no sense of straining to obtain effects of contrast. Petrushka's cry, for one thing, is relatively euphonious here, and the Rite in general is probably not quite as dramatic as my wonderful performance, extraordinarily well recorded on a Mercury LP about 50 years ago, by Dorati with the Minneapolis orchestra. On the other hand, Boulez at this stage of his career seems concerned more than before with beauty of orchestral tone, and I say without hesitation that this is the most beautiful Petrushka that I have ever heard in my own lengthening life.
In any case, even if the new approach is less forceful than previously, I detect no loss whatsoever of underlying strength. Boulez has always seemed to me ideally suited as a conductor of Stravinsky. His dynamics may be less `terraced' here than he would once have made them, but the clarity of texture that he obtains is as absolute as ever, and his strength of line and rock-steady firmness of rhythm mark him out as they always did. Above all what is bound to strike you in this performance is the sheer quality of it all. Listening to sound as magnificent as this, I was astonished that it had been achieved so long ago as 1991. Szell had turned the Cleveland Orchestra into a mighty playing-machine, so bring on the right maestro to mould and direct the virtuosity of every section of the band, give them all world-beating engineering, and the end product is an outright orgy of acoustical perfection and beauty. What an amazing bunch of orchestrators the Russian masters were! Stravinsky was a pupil of Rimsky himself, and the master might have envied his pupil if he had heard what we can all, in the third millennium, hear on this disc.
Occasionally everything seems to go right, just as all too often nothing seems to, and here, on top of the outstanding performance and recording, we have a first class liner-essay by Professor Richard Taruskin. I personally wonder whether, even in 1911, the Rite of Spring was as much of a shock to its hearers as Taruskin lets on - he himself admits that what caused the misbehaviour during the Paris premiere was more Nijinsky's choreography than Stravinsky's harmonies. However he has been given adequate space to set out his erudition and his insights, and he has the appropriate material to fill the space with. These days I find it hard to suppose that Stravinsky in general, and these two works in particular, are capable of shocking any but the least experienced music-lovers. To them, and to those who have been around the matter longer, I say that if the word that you would have used to characterise Stravinsky was not `beautiful' it will be after you have got to know this disc. He is my own favourite Russian composer of them all, but I'm not sure I had quite understood what he amounts to in all ways until I had heard what I have heard on this occasion."
Pretty Amazing
Dave | Hoffman Estates, IL USA | 12/31/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"For those unfamiliar with Barenboim's conducting, he seems to have a reputation for leaving issues like entrances and accuracy of rhythm for the players to deal with. In short, ensemble precision typically is not a trademark of his, which makes the performances on this CD all the more shocking. Who would expect the Rite of Spring, of all things, to sound so rhythmic, clear, and powerful under Barenboim? He has the Chicago Symphony playing with incredible tightness and security in this remarkably difficult work. The various climaxes are full of fire, as well.Both La Mer and Boulez's Notations VII get refined playing also, even though there's a certain heaviness about the La Mer that takes away slightly from some of the atmospheric and shimmering effects of the piece. Overall, a great (and surprising) disc, supported by Teldec's terrific sonics."
Underrated
Arnout Koeneman | the netherlands | 05/22/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is my favorite Stravinsky disc, along with Boulez' and Dorati's Firebird.
I never liked Stravinsky's own recordings that much, in Petrouchka he's very rude, he underplays the gentle passages very much and in Le Sacre he's too fast in some parts and therefore not powerfull enough.
I've listened to many records and I must say I quite like a lot of recordings of Le Sacre, but there aren't that many good Petrouchkas.
The only one I almost like as much as Boulez' is Dorati's and Boulez' earlier one for Sony
Boulez might seem a bit unexiting at first glance, but his version is very accurate, precise, sharp and constant moving...his natural phrasing makes his version much more fluid, forward moving, where others stop the music at times, wanting to add too much contrasts in tempi at certain parts.
As a whole Boulez' recording moves along a lot quicker than others, because of his seamless moulding of every single fragmented part...surprising because in some passages he's actually slower than many.
The recording is detailed, spacious and quite refined and maybe that's the reason why many people think it lacks excitement.
Considering only the old records people mention as their favorites, with more direct and louder sound, this doesn't come as a surprise to me.
Yes I would've liked a Mercury Living Presence sound with this Boulez recording, with that sound I'm almost certain many would adore Boulez' Petroushka!"
Track Listings (6) - Disc #1