I’m afraid this is a short review, as I can’t honestly say I would recommend anyone to spend their hard-earned cash on this Russian double-album. This is some of the most frequently recorded repertoire to be found, and the competition is fierce: Mravinsky, Sinopoli, Karajan and Furtwängler have all produced classic recordings, while Pletnev’s comparatively recent Pathétique with the Russian National Orchestra is equally superb. Amid such company, this one’s a non-starter.

The trouble really lies with the conducting, and my worries began very near the start of CD1 where the moody theme in the strings is presented with a kind of mechanical rubato that has the melody and its brass accompaniment in two completely different tempi. The Fourth Symphony suffers all the way through from the sort of wilful driving of the music that leaves the poor orchestral players struggling in the conductor’s wake. Pity the solo oboist in the slow movement, trying to introduce some flexibility into his phrasing – no, Vakhtang Jordania just sweeps on regardless. Clarinet theme in the first movement’s second subject? Virtually inaudible behind a deafening string accompaniment. These balance problems pervade all the performances, the most farcical being the woodwind presentation of the love theme in Romeo and Juliet, totally drowned out by the counter-melody in first horn.

Things are not helped by a weirdly idiosyncratic recording; microphones are placed so close to the front desks of the strings that you can usually hear the leader’s tone as quite separate from the other fiddles, while any ’cello passages are made to sound like solos, as only the principal can be heard. Unfortunately for him, Jordania can’t escape the blame for this either, as he is named as the recording’s ‘Executive Producer’.

It’s very sad, because the orchestral playing, or what you can hear of it, suggests that this orchestra might be capable of half decent readings under sympathetic and musical guidance. Alas, they don’t get it this time.

Gwyn Parry-Jones

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