Search - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Scriabin, Evgeny Svetlanov :: Rimsky-Korsakov: Scherherazade; Scriabin: Le Poème de l'extase

WOW!

Starry Vere | Silver Lake OH USA | 05/25/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For once, a real "BBC Legend." Svetlanov's 1968 Royal Albert Hall performance of Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy is a sonic volcano, a wild, voluptuous ride with old school Russian brass blaring at white heat. You don't hear them like that anymore. The multi-tiered, bell-tolling climaxes of the final ascent are hair-raising, and the pause before the incendiary final cadence must be heard to be believed. A real blast.

The Rimsky if fine, but the Scrabin is nonpareil."

Apocalyptic Performance of Poem of Ecstasy!!!

Scriabinmahler | UK | 02/20/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"
As you can imagine from this heavy weight conductor, Scheherazade is played very slowly and passionately, but music itself does not impress me very much, and Royal Festival Hall's acoustics is dreadful. It sounds as if played in a small house build with cardboard boxes although recorded stereo in 1978. I bought this cd only for Scriabin's Poem of ecstasy after reading above review. It turned out to be truly apocalyptic performance, if not best interpretation.



I think the best performance of the work by Svetlanov is his 1990 version recorded originally by Russian company, but unfortunately recording engineers made mess of it by setting recording level too high from the begining, not realising the enormity of dynamics to anticipate. When the music reaches final climax, more than half of the sound is gone muffled by terrible breaking distortion noise. What a shame! It could have been quite an event in recording industry history! (the same tragedy happened to Ormandy's RCA recording of Resurrection Symphony. The greatest performance of the symphony ruined by recording engineers!).



Back to this BBC Legend recording, recorded live in 1968(stereo), Royal Albert Hall, thankfully the enormous climax is captured well. This is probably Svetlanov's fastest rendition of Ecstasy, only 20 minutes including applause. So it's relatively free from over-exaggeration and does not drag like some of his later recordings in the 90s. I can imagine it must have been quite an experience to listen to this live in the place. It sounds as if Svetlanov was determined to make the dome of Albert Hall burst out open by the music!



If you can approve this interpretation, there's even more outrageously, monstrously apocalyptic recording by Svetlanov on Japanese label, Exton, recorded live in 1996. The recording quality is far better. The release of the recording was said to be prompted by votes from fans. For listeners who can not stand Svetlanov's grandiose style, the famous Philadelphia recording by Muti or Pletnev's DG recording is still unbeatable both performance-wise and recording quality-wise."