Search - Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Steinberg :: Symphony 2 / Classical Symphony

Right up there

06/29/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The legacy of William Steinberg has gone into a kind of eclipse, but maybe, just maybe he's beginning to emerge.This issue goes some way toward that end. The '57 stereo sound is lovely, the Pittsburgh Symphony at its considerable best, Steinberg at his most inspired. The maestro's view is ultra-Romantic, of an older school, at a time when the dramatic thrust and elegant sheen of Paul Paray had just come on the scene with a Mercury issue that blasted preconceptions of what this work is all about.I prefer the Paray approach since it brings out far more of the dramatic and kinetic as well as the spit and shine in the work, but Steinberg's way harks back to a deeply-felt tradition. If you have Paray, Steinberg, and the excellent Wallenstein, all your Rachmaninoff Second moods will be covered.And in thinking about that, isn't it nice to know that the orchestras of Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles did all this vintage work?"