Fine Ravel and Stravinsky Courtesy of Maazel and the New Yor
John Kwok | New York, NY USA | 06/24/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)
"If nothing else, this DG Concerts release demonstrates that the New York Philharmonic Orchestra is truly in fine form, playing with ample technical brilliance and warmth under Lorin Maazel's baton. Moreover it is truly amazing that the sound quality in these live recordings are as fine as any studio recording. There is indeed much to recommend on this CD, especially in the latter half of the program, with superlative playing of both Stravinsky works; indeed the L'Oiseau de Feu is among the finest recordings of it I've heard anywhere. Having had the tendency to underrate Maazel as interpreter, I was truly pleasantly surprised with both of these performances, which hold their own against the very best from the likes of Abbado, Munch and Boulez, among others. I also enjoyed Maazel's interpretations of both Ravel works, especially the second suite from the ballet Daphnis et Chloe. However, in an already crowded field of recordings, I'm not sure if these are as outstanding as those I've heard from the likes of Bernard Haitink, Charles Dutoit, and Pierre Boulez, among others."
Maazel NYP: Ravel & Stravinsky Orch Music: Clean Sweep, Play
Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 02/26/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is an excerpt disc from four recent NYP concerts under the current music director Lorin Maazel. His choice to lead the philharmonic was controversial in some quarters, owing to his alleged difficult reputation as a perfectionist technical taskmaster, further perceived by some as arrogant and cool to the point of a sort of detached, lofty nastiness. Nobody could object to new music director's musical qualifications per se, but the dire prediction was that his sort would end up bringing the wonderful philharmonic down, everybody ultimately bummed out by all manner of mistreatment. A sort of redux of, say, Charles Dutoit in Montreal?
So much for rumor mills and doomsday predictions.
If this disc is any indication, the NYP is playing better than ever. Their sheen and brilliance in all departments now rivals the famed USA aristocrat of orchestras, that is, Boston. Nor is all this great musical ability and insouciant ease put at any service to distance the players or the listener from the music at hand.
Ravel and Stravinsky belong together - at least so far as the early ballet suite from L'oiseau de feu and Chant du rossignol go in keeping excellent company here with the second suite from Daphnis et chloe and the Rhapsodie espagnole. The sweep is surging and expertly paced at the beginning of the Ravel suite. It is supposed to be a musical depiction of sunrise, after all. So, something of the fresh wonders of the most amazing sunrise possible, a new mythic day dawning (as perceived by the youthful protagonists, Daphnis and Chloe) - is entirely apt. Doing this sort of thing musically is however fraught with risks and dangers. Too brilliant in a detached way, and the whole business falls off its fences, devolving into a faux naturalism that seems to parody, well, parody. Too homely, and the wondrous ethos of immense mythical youth and beauty simply collapses into banal, ordinary musical realities.
Given what Maazel and the NYP do with this second suite, they could well be tapped to record a new super audio multiple channel disc of the complete ballet - rivaling everybody else in the commercial catalogs, including such famous previous readings as Munch with BSO (now remastered in super audio, thank goodness), Dutoit with Montreal, and Boulez with Berlin or New York (SACD again), and the big marker set, Jean Martinon with Orchestre de Paris. Even grandperes Ernst Ansermet and Andre Cluytens cannot have outdone the current reading.
Although this disc is regular, red book CD, it demonstrates how much can still be done with red book standards, provided everybody involved bothers to work at it. The sound in Avery Fischer Hall has never sounded better - full frequency, blooming with just enough hall ambience, and clear-sharp as one of those xacto hobby knives that will let you cut off your own fingers before you have completely realized what happened. In earlier stereo, this was the kind of sound we associated with Szell in Cleveland - full, clear, not able to pinch an inch of fat, but nevertheless stirring and luscious.
Yes, luscious. The Rhapsodie espagnole has tang and strength, like a really fine glass of Spanish dessert wine from Malaga or Jerez. It also has immense irony, fun filled with roiling, rollicking gesture - flamenco raw, improvisational.
All this, the two Ravel pieces, could have been too slick to matter. But neither is too slick, and each one surely matters.
Now reflect very briefly on the fact that all of this was caught in live concert performances. If you are listening on headphones (as I did at first), you will indeed hear a distant, discreet cough or two far in the back and sides. But the operative word is, discreet. Otherwise audience sounds do not mar these readings, nor lessen their merit as fav shelf necessities.
Kudos to the NYP woodwinds, and everybody else, too. The right combinations of creaminess, tonal etch, and blend just pout out from the first notes, and just keep on pouring to disc's end. Vivid touches of warmth amplify the bohemian French slouch, so none of the music's rakish beret dangling Maltese Falcon cigarette angles ever falls into being artless or dehumanized. Well, bravo.
The Stravinsky tone poem about the nightingale comes off, complex, brilliantly, too. I confess I can take or leave this Stravinsky piece, and in this reading, I am definitely on the side of Bring It On. This nightingale tone poem manages good company with Ravel, and offers up very modernist touches of the same Bartok who wrote that fierce ballet called Miraculous Mandarin. Something in Stravinsky's handling of folk-like materials also seems more reminiscent of Bartok than of Ravel. Small wonder, then, that the impresario Diaghilev rushed to claim the tone poem as a ballet when original plans for its premiere in Switzerland fell through with the Free Theater going out of business, and the Ballet Russe Paris double-billed premiere with Rimsky's Golden Cockerell falling flat. Despite all the modernisms and the opera's real history of being composed piecemeal across the composer's infamous transitions in dominant musical style, this tone poem does come out sounding more dance-able than not, confirming Diaghilev's artistic and business instincts.
Yes the strings and woodwinds are just marvelous in the nightingale tone poem, with a special hat tip to the brass players. They do their Bartokian assignments without braying Stravinsky into the Hungarian, showing restraint and polish as well as being muscular and fierce in passing. Thanks, too, you low strings growlers. (My old music teacher's husband used to play in the double-bass section.)
Whew. This disc is amazing so far. Especially when you remember, These readings are combined together from four NYP evenings of LIVE concert performances.
The game winds up with the suite from Stravinsky's Firebird ballet. Arriving after the Nightingale tone poem, the suite sounds just a bit comfortable and old-fashioned. Wrapping up after the Ravel that started the disc, it risks being a step backwards in manner or sophistication. Fear not. From the mysterious bass line treads that open the scenario, we are let loose, fresh and fast, on all the marks - including the Russian folklore ones, plus the modernist changes being rung on a new century ones.
Capturing the firebird is edgy, not just pretty. She is fire, after all. The enchanted princesses are lyrically beautiful, yet remain prisoner's of the evil Kashchei's spell. He wants to own them timelessly preserved, not love them as real women. Their round dance takes place, self-enclosed, as if the princesses were confined to the most platinum-filigreed of snow globes. K's infernal dance is, well, infernal. K's athletic, and mean. The lullaby and finale apotheosis bring the fairy tale to a fulfilling, happy close. Again a listener wishes Maazel and NYP had been doing the ballet, whole. A super audio disc of their reading could have been the equal of Ansermet's complete recording with the London Philharmonia, way back in the day.
Bravo, glissandi trombones, braying, growling, climbing those smeared scales.
The closing great wedding-love celebration melody that could have been a second-rate repeat of Rimsky declares itself, all fresh and new and commanding. The disc began with Ravel's balletic new day dawning, and so we end. Come full circle, in some surprising musical sense.
Against all odds, this disc carries the philharmonic casting considerable spells of its own, for real. I took a long time, hesitant to check it out, because of all those odds, including the rumor mills with their dire predictions about how inevitably NYP had to go downhill under Maazel. Now, fret not about the odds to all the supposed contraries - this one is a sure bet. A red book CD demonstration sound disc, plus a musical keeper if you love these Ravel and Stravinsky works at all.
Oh Universal Classics. More, please? In super audio surround sound?"
The orchestra is marvelous, but Maazel is slack and dutiful
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 09/11/2007
(3 out of 5 stars)
"I wonder how well these DG Live Concerts are doing, given that in the oepra world the Met seems to have scored quite well with live simulcasts? This particular NY Phil. program under Lorin Maazel features the folowing:
Ravel: Daphnis and Chloe Suite #2, Rhapsodie espagnole
Stravinsky: Song of the Nightingalle Suite
Firebrid Suite (1919 version)
Four highly coloristic works may be to much of a good thing, although Ravel and Stravinsky do pair well, the one being all sumptuous velbet, the other dry Champagne. I'm being glib, however, since the Firebird is every bit as luxurious as Daphnis. The love sonics are excellent, and one could easily mistake this CD for a stoduio job. The NY Phil. plays with sparkle and impeccable virtuosity. I also had high hopes for Maazel, whose great strength is his technical ability. But Daphnis starts off sluggishly and never gets much beter, although the concluding Danse generale is full of suave energy (I like it more barbaric in order to cut through the whippe cream harmonies).
Rhapsodie espagnole can be a haunting experience when played to the ultimate in refinement and atmosphere, as Karajan does with the Berlin Phil. on EMI. Maazel is good but nothing special, and once again there's a lack of inner vitality. The Stravinsky half of the program is more satisfying. This is really an enticing Chant du rossignol, with marvelous solo pplaying from the first oboe as the nightingale. Grat solo work from the winds in the Firebird Suite, which is alert and fast-moving, despite the fact that Maazel is sitll functioning on three cylinders.
In all, I would have enjoyed this concert as a suscriber to the NY Phil., but I'm not sure it has any special quality to recommend it in a field of brilliant recordings from Munch, Monteux, Giulini, and Karajan, just to mention a handful of conductors who excelle in the French and Russian idiom."
Track Listings (18) - Disc #1
