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Daniele Gatti, is he good? Taking over soon.
My kid's high schoolers are playing this live on Wednesday, conducted always (at least for a few yrs) by Larry Livingston's assistant (USC).
Hey, Todd K, I listened to the copy of the Frank Shipway version with Cleveland from Blossom. Pretty great, as you said. But did not compare various ones yet.
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From purely a read perspective, Eivind Gullberg Jensen is maybe the closest to Shipway's read I've encountered..... The tempos and balances throughout were almost identical. Especially the first three movements. The main difference is the "Radio Filharmonisch Orkest" didn't have close to the horsepower that Cleveland (circa 1980) had..... (I recognized the Amsterdam Concertgebouw hall, but it was not the resident orchestra.) From purely a read standpoint, almost without flaw.
In the final movement of the Rach Two, there is a trumpet passage in the primary melody.... Counterpoint to the strings.... I have yet to hear a performance that comes even close to Cleveland's trumpet section in Shipway's performance.
Todd, I really liked that performance, too. It "sold me" on a work I have gotten bored with in the past. Now I'm really looking forward to hearing it at Severance Hall this spring conducted by Jahja Ling.
One nice set of the Rachmaninoff symphonies is the Slatkin/St. Louis set on Vox from the 80s. Nice performances. And Amphissa is correct, they can be quite difficult to perform. This often depends quite a bit on who is on the podium, and what they are doing to the pieces - often they see the name Rachmaninoff and think that gives them license to do whatever they hell they feel like, often very different from the composer's markings, and usually with bad results.....
Looks as if Slatkin is re-recording the Rachmaninoff symphonies with the Detroit SO - at least I've seen the Second and Third so far. I think these newer recordings are also available as 24-bit downloads - which could give them a bit of an advantage over the 80's Saint Louis recordings. Not having heard either though, I don't know for sure.
Like any great symphony, the music will carry the orchestra to heights that will please the audience.
That said, Rachmaninoff's music is not easy going for the orchrestra. It sounds so good in recordings and with great orchestras, with smoothly beautiful slow movements and compelling melodies carrying the excitement of the faster movements. It's the sweeping melodies that audiences love.
But the section parts are often very challenging. There behind the wonderful melodies, musicians can struggle. A flautist friend who has played for several very good orchestras once told me that the flute parts in Rachmaninoff symphonies, especially the 1st and 2nd, require a lot of practice for professionals and can be really difficult for inexperienced musicians.
The 2nd is a great symphony. The orchestra will love playing it, because it is challenging, but also because it is such a finely crafted work. And the audience will love it, because of the great melodies and excitement Rachmaninoff composed.
As for recordings, well, they are all over the map. One common practice that you encounter with recordings and live performances is that a lot of them do not actually adhere very well to the score. Rachmaninoff was meticulous and very specific with a lot of his markings. For example, a lot of recordings and performances, they add a big whack of tympani at the end of the first movement. Rachmaninoff did not write that in the score. I'm not sure who inserted it to begin with, but it is now pretty common. And second, if the orchestra is taking all the exposition repeats, it is imperative to keep the tempo up, as Rachmaninoff intended, because otherwise it drags. That can really compromise the final movement.
If you are looking to buy a recording, there are many to choose from. I have some personal favorites, but I'm an old guy and have more than 60 recordings of this symphony in my collection. I like analog, and cuts don't really bother me that much. So my personal favorites don't necessarily coincide with my recommendations for others.
For the best balance of performance and audio quality, I'd suggest the recording by Fischer with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. The audio is good SACD. The performance is very good.
"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)
I am on the edge of my seat, which ones do you like other than the Fischer? Old guy.
My wife and I are starting to do some extensive comparative listening to various Rach Sym 2 recordings, and, based on what we've heard so far, we would agree with you about the virtues of the Fischer/BFO recording on Channel Classics. So many performances of this work have such sludgy textures that, sometimes, you can't even hear the main line amidst all the textural muck (with secondary lines obscuring things). (And then Rachmaninoff gets blamed for being a bad orchestrator!) We thought Fischer did a particularly fine job of maintaining an exciting clarity and direction in the performance in comparison to the other performances we've heard so far - and certainly, Jared's usual sterling engineering helps Fischer's case.
We had just a bit of a discussion about Gatti a couple of weeks ago:
Thanks for the link, made it easy. I did read your comments, and just reviewed the entire link.
What prompted me was not Gatti at all, but Rach 2. Was watching him conduct RCO in the piece.
My kid's orch does some of it tonight. Conductor is Sey Ahn, who assists Larry Livingston. They have passion for youth orchestras.
I listened to some of Paray's performance with DSO, and had listened to the late Shipway's Blossom performance with Cleveland about a week ago.
But don't have any others. The Paray is a bit driven and dry on movement 1, 2 and 4, but 3 (adagio) is astounding, romantic, beautiful.
I like it, but, unfortunately, it's got cuts, as was true of any recording of the Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 made prior Paul Kletzki's Decca recording with the OSR in 1968 (!).
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