| Review by Jonalogic March 7, 2013 (10 of 12 found this review helpful)
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Performance:  |
How does one describe such a set, containing so many musical treasures? But also, regretfully, explicit sonic horrors...
I have expressed my opinions concerning Mravinsky and the Leningrad Philharmonic before. I believe this combination to be one of the greatest music performing treasures of the 20th century. Before much of the string section emigrated to Israel in the 80s, the strings of this orchestra were quite unique in their control, power, dynamics and singing quality; I only heard them twice, and never forgot the sound. Mravinsky was just a unique conductor, of course, and we are fortunate that Shostakovich entrusted so many of his symphonic premieres to him.
This set contains 7 RBCD's worth of music-making, much of it great. Regretfully, there is only one Shostakovich symphony, his 6th, but that is truly definitive. I have listened to this set twice in the last few weeks, and many things stand out as musical highlights:
1) The aforementioned Shostakovich
2) A stunning Hidemith Harmonie der Welt Symphony
3) A passion-filled and relentless Honnegger Symphonie Liturgique
4) A quite magnificent Sibelius 7 and luminous Swan of Tuonela
5) A Tchaikovsky 5 far superior to his DG outing, matched with a hysterical and hypnotic Francesca da Rimini
6) A superb Bartok MFSPAC - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste
7) A ravishingly lithe and sensuous Debussy L'Apres
8) Hair-raising 'bleeding chunks' from the Ring
Need I go on? There is nothing humdrum here, suffice it to say.
But then we come to the sound. It's not good, even when making allowances for its Russian tape/16/44 remastering - in fact, much of it is pretty damn awful. Shrieking top end, mid-range suckout, not much bass to mention, artifical balances, too many mikes and too damn close. In fact, it does rather take us back to the days of the screaming Melodiyas. And the 72's don't seem to me that much better than the '65 recordings, regretfully.
So, the music-making is great, but matched with deplorably historic sonics - hence my marking. One last piece of advice might be to listen on 'forgiving' rather than ultra-transparent equipment. My main Goldmund/Esoteric/Martin-Logan system just revealed too much, so I ended up auditioning much of the set on my A/V or study gear instead. That's never happened before. Sometimes, one can just open the window too damn wide...
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