Search - R. Strauss, Pittsburgh Symphony Orch :: Richard Strauss: Alpine Symphony, Macbeth

Strong performance, excellent sonics

B. Guerrero | 07/31/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Hard on the heels of Fabio Luisi's excellent Dresden recording of Strauss' "Alpensinfonie" (Sony Classical), comes this beauty from Pentatone. I have a very slight preference for the Luisi, but only because the playing of the Staatskapelle just glows from beginning to end. But the combination of Pittsburgh and Pentatone give us a bit more visceral impact - no more so than in the famous "storm" passage towards the end. Janowski takes the storm at a blistering tempo, and the Pentatone engineers capture the wind machine and thunder sheet perfectly (the thunder sheet happens only at the climax). That's saying something, considering what a dense mumbo-jumbo of sound the storm passage often times be. Luisi, on the other hand, swipes the cake back at the tall Alpine peaks passage. But again, only slightly so. While Pittsburg's unison horns are outstanding, Luisi and his Dresdeners make those peaks sound a bit more local and overwhelming. But if your a sonics junky, you may want to go with this one. Also, the performance of Strauss' "Four Last Songs" on the Luisi disc are not all that competitive with the better sung versions available (I like Jessye Norman and Karita Mattila). Janowski gives you Strauss' less mature but more rarely heard tone-poem, "MacBeth". Either way, you win!"