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Nikolai RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908) Scheherazade Op.35 Igor STRAVINSKY (1882-1971) Le Rossignol [Song of the Nightingale] Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Fritz Reiner Rec. Orchestra Hall, February 8th 1960 (Rimsky) and November 3rd 1956 (Stravinsky) RCA RED SEAL LIVING STEREO SUPER AUDIO CD 82876 66377 2 [66.51]

The RCA Living Era series has resurrected a classic Scheherazade on SACD, coupled with Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol. Neither will offer many, if any, surprises by now though the new format offers its own frisson. Reiner was seventy-two when he took Scheherazade into Orchestra Hall to make this recording and had only two years more to live. The reading is sensuous and warm, lithe and enveloping but also perhaps somewhat idiosyncratic. Though some critics tend to tout this recording it doesn’t really, in interpretative matters, quite measure up to, say, Beecham or Kletzki, to take two other classics from that period. There are too many disjunctive caesuri in the opening movement, too many metrical displacements that just call attention to themselves too boldly. Of course Frank Miller, section leading cellist supreme, is on hand in the second movement – his poignant diminuendi offer tutorship to any singer, let alone string players, and Ray Still’s oboe is here eloquence personified. But isn’t there just too much dawdling from around 8.40 – added to which despite the revamped sound the climax isn’t penetrating or jubilant enough. Some of the phrasing in the third movement borders on the mannered, though the percussion is very well caught and the finale erupts in fast-tonguing brass and acrobatic, balletic flute and wind playing. Throughout in fact the orchestral playing is at a very high level.  This spills over in the Stravinsky, made four years earlier, and with the same complement of fine principals. I especially admired the flute playing in The Song of the Nightingale and the powerful rhythm Reiner evinces throughout, one of his most invincible qualities. The booklet reprints in the main the original LP liner notes and the jewel case has an added surprise. You need to press slightly harder to open it; it has a kind of plastic clasp built in. This of course a SACD, to which I could only listen on an ordinary set up. Jonathan Woolf   Advertising Rates Visitor stats MusicWeb International has over 40,000 Classical CD reviews on offer Discs received Having a problem Donating? Gerard Hoffnung Concerts & The Bricklayer Story   New Releases New Releases   MusicWeb sells the Polish catalogue CDAccord £10.50 post free W-W MusicWeb sells the Arcodiva catalogue £12.00 post free W-W £11.75 post-free world- wide MusicWeb can now offer you discs from the following catalogues: Prices include postage [Acte Préalable £13.50] [Arcodiva £12.00] [Avie from £6.25] [British Music Society £12.00] [CDACCORD from £13.50 ] [ClassicO £12.50] [Hallé from £11] [Heritage £10] [Hortus £14.99 ] [Lyrita ONLY £11.75 ] [Nimbus Special prices] [Northern Flowers £13.50] [REDCLIFFE £11 ] [Sheva £11] [Tactus £11.50 ] [Talent from £12.00 ] [Toccata Classics £10.50 ] Musicweb Special Offers Monthly Best Buys     Google Ads - for information about privacy matters, click here.  Amazon Musicweb International is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

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