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Whoah! This was NOT what I was expecting!

Posted by Chris from Lafayette (A) on July 6, 2016 at 18:07:54

In Reply to: Patricia Hase posted by jazz1 on July 6, 2016 at 00:07:54:

So I downloaded Patricia's Beethoven/Ustvolskaya album and started at the beginning (with the Beethoven). Aside from the unpleasant vice on the vibrato which the conductor no doubt imposed (this HIP vibrato influence is getting really terrible!), I'm thinking, "something sounds strange in this orchestral tutti" - oh yeah, there are no winds in the orchestra! It's just strings! And in the middle of the slow movement, there are parts where only the principal players play (rather than the whole section as one normally hears it), and it sounds like a Beethoven Trio rather than a Beethoven Concerto. So then I go back to the computer to look at the booklet, and it turns out that they're not playing Beethoven's original (obviously!), but rather an arrangement for strings made in the 1880's by Vinzenz Lachner! So on that basis alone, this recording has extended my knowledge about this music - I had never been aware of Lachner's arrangements before!

So that kind of puts this recording in a one-of-a-kind category. It's very interestingly recorded too: the bass lines have greater prominence than on most other recordings, and, for that reason, you can hear all the interesting things the orchestra is doing with the articulation.

The company makes a big deal of its "direct to two channel" approach to recording, but one of the pictures in the booklet shows at least three pairs of microphones along with separate microphones for the piano. Unfortunately, one of the piano microphones is over the bass strings and one is over the treble strings, resulting in a "bass notes on the left, treble notes on the right" image of the keyboard which spreads across the length of my speakers. Nevertheless, I like other aspects of the recording, which, as I already mentioned, allow you to hear interesting articulation details.

As for the Usvolskaya Concerto for Piano, Tympani and Strings, I have to admit that I wasn't too impressed with its Shostakovich-derived gestures: with one exception near the beginng, the work kind of just sits there like a big blob. That's just my first impression, and maybe I'll change my mind after some repeated hearings.

I thought Patricia was pretty good, but, this being a one-shot unedited live recording, there were inevitably some inconsistencies in her touch that might have been smoothed out in the editing room if this had been a studio recording.

It may seem as if I'm a bit down on this release, but I'm glad I downloaded it because I found certain aspects of it very interesting indeed! As I said, thanks for the heads up!

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Atma-Sphere Music Systems, Inc.

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