Mercury Living Presence

Leonard Slatkin and the BBC Symphony Orchestra deliver a coolly new-age performance of Colin McPhee's proto-minimalist masterpiece Tabuh-Tabuhan, very similar to Dennis Russell Davies' recording for Argo. It's very well played and very beautiful although quite different from Howard Hanson's speedier and more dynamic rendition on Mercury Living Presence. The Britten/McPhee recording of Balinese Ceremonial Music has been available previously but makes an apt coupling, especially in the company of this new suite (arranged by Donald Mitchell and Mervyn Cooke) from Britten's The Prince of the Pagodas. This contains a huge slice (some 50 minutes) of the ballet, including the exotic "pagoda" music inspired by the composer's trip to Bali, but unaccountably omits some of the best numbers from the usual suite, such as the final pas de deux of Belle Rose and the Prince. All the same, like the McPhee it's very well played and finely recorded too, making this enterprising release well worth owning from just about any point of view.

Pieter Wispelwey and his gut-string cello partner for a second time with Paolo Giacometti in a programme of Chopin and Mendelssohn. But there is a another great musical figure on this disc – the cellist and composer Karl Davidoff, who studied with Moscheles and Mendelssohn’s violinist and composer friend Ferdinand David. Davidoff’s brilliant arrangements of the Chopin Waltzes Op. 64 form a sparkling interlude between Mendelssohn’s brilliant 2nd sonata, and Chopin’s late and great sonata for cello and piano.

Offenbach: Gaîté parisienne, Strauss: Graduation Ball (Doráti/MSO)
Vinyl Rip in 24-Bit/96-kHz | FLAC tracks | cue | no log | Covers | FS, MU, HF | 1.07 GB 3% rec
1957 | Genre: Classical | Label: Mercury | Living Presence SR-90016 | US pressing, FR-1/FR-1

Brilliant recording of favorite ballet scores by a conductor who commands an appropriately energetic approach. The sound here is exceptionally live, with remarkable definition of various instruments and real "bite" to the reproduction.

(Billboard, Jan 1958)

Nobody is better suited to undertake such a challenge than Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Orchestra. Over a period of a year all 15 Symphonies and 6 Concertos have been recorded at Salle Pleyel in Paris. What an adventure for the artists and the big production team! Never before in the history of television has something like this been undertaken including the very first "Ring" for television at Bayreuth.

Under the baton of conductor Mark Scatterday, the Eastman Wind Ensemble celebrates its 60th anniversary with its first recording for Avie, a superb reading of Stravinsky's Octet, while the Eastman Virtuosi, with narrator Jan Opalach, deliver a devilish rendition of L'Histoire du Soldat.