Comparison Recordings
André Previn, LSO EMI DVD-Audio
7243 4 92399 9 9
Zubin Mehta, LAPO Decca 467418
When I first discovered
classical music, the recording
of The Planets was by Malcolm
Sargent. I still remember moments of
pure, clear beauty from that long gone
disk that seem never to have been recaptured,
but I’m probably just indulging in nostalgic
fantasy. Nowadays everybody does The
Planets, and I expect the next recordings
we hear will be from Nikolaus Harnoncourt,
Valery Gergiev, René Clemencic,
Pierre Boulez, and Reinhard Goebel.
Karajan, who recorded almost no British
music, recorded The Planets twice.
Patrick Gleeson’s synthesizer version
should be ready for re-release on CD
soon now. This performance of The
Planets by Lloyd-Jones, the second
recording from the Scottish National
Orchestra, is quite good, but at those
critical moments when we hope for genius,
we get competence instead. The sound
engineers have let everybody down. On
the SACD surround sound tracks the delicate
harp and percussion accents are all
but inaudible. Neptune is too fast and
(like the Bernstein recording) too loud;
the chorus is in the back of the hall,
but they sound as if their acoustic
has been electronically altered. There
is nothing on this disk below about
90 Hz, so the all important organ and
bass drum accents are weak and tend
to boom. The upper mid range is "bright"
and a little congested.
I obtained the best
sound on The Planets playing
the two track SACD version through my
Dolby digital surround decoder. The
orchestra has better focus — instruments
are more distinct and don’t drift around
the room — the bass and highs are less
congested and the chorus sounds cleaner
and more realistic and is still placed
at rear center. The fadeout on the chorus
is one of the very best I’ve heard.
All this leads me to conjecture that
the 2 channel and surround SACD versions
are possibly separate recordings using
different microphones.
If you want The
Planets in high definition sound,
by all means buy the EMI DVD-Audio disk
while you can. You’ll never be sorry,
for no matter who else records The
Planets the Previn performance will
always be exceptionally worthwhile.
If you don’t have SACD or DVD-Audio
and want a good Planets, buy
the Decca disk; at the price you couldn’t
do better.
The Mystic Trumpeter,
to a text by Walt Whitman, was written
in 1904 and revised in 1912, but lay
unpublished until 1979, and is the second
work by Holst to evidence his admiration
for the American poet, the first having
been the Overture: Walt Whitman
of 1899. Claire Rutter has a magnificent
voice — clear, expressive — is passionately
inspired, and inspires those who accompany
her. Even the sound engineers do much
better work on this selection, or perhaps
it is just that the sparer orchestration
in this work better suits the acoustics
of the hall. Here the SACD surround
version is far and away the best, with
the voice distinct throughout the orchestral
climaxes. When Claire Rutter does Elgar’s
Sea Pictures, or the Götterdämmerung
Brünnhilde, I want to be there.
Perhaps I am just too
British at heart to appreciate Whitman.
I have a similar reaction to Whitman
that I have to jazz, that is to say,
every now and then it grabs me, but
just for a moment. There is more to
freedom than merely forsaking discipline.
No question Whitman was a genius, for
his highs are very high indeed, but
what a pity he didn’t encounter Alexander
Pope at an impressionable age.
Buy this disk for The
Trumpeter; you’ll never be sorry,
for no one will ever do it any better.
Paul Shoemaker
see CD
review by Ian Lace
Message
received
Would you be kind enough to pass on
to Mr. Shoemaker that the (1958)
Sargent interpretation of the 'Planets'
that he rhapsodizes about in the subject
review (and that, by the way, I agree
with him about,) has just been
reissued on CD (May 2004) on EMI Classics
for Pleasure 5859132, and is
just as refreshingly pure. clear and
beautiful as ever? Oddly, according
to
the CD liner notes, it was apparently
digitally remastered in 1996, but I
do
not recall any EMI label issuing it
at that time.
Thank you.
John Lockwood
Claire Rutter, soprano. Ladies of the RSNO Chorus.
NAXOS
6.110004 [68.52] 