No disrespect
to the forces involved here but this can only be a hopeful
issue from Capriccio trading as it does on its incarnation
as an SACD that combines the piano and orchestrated versions
of Pictures. I don’t think collectors will be much
impressed by the conjunction of a studio performance of
the former by Dénes Várjon and a concert recording of the
latter with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Gilbert
Levine. There are no biographical notes regarding the artists
(to be fair Gilbert Levine is relatively well known), which
rather reinforces the thought that this is primarily a “medium”
issue rather than a serious contender.
Várjon has some
oddities in his arsenal when it comes to unadulterated Mussorgsky
These mainly concern questions of phrasing and accenting,
some of which can border on the mannered. Gnomus
has more than its fair share, abetted by a recording that
sounds, on my ordinary set-up, to be rather brittle and
studio-cold. The Old Castle is morose to the point
of taciturnity – that left hand doesn’t really work as hard
as it might. And whilst the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks
(here called in glorious Germanic translation Ballet
of chicks Emerging from their Eggs) is daintily done
Várjon’s tone can rather thin, whether as a result of the
studio acoustic or other reasons. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs
(here classified as Chicken’s legs) is controlled and
The Great Gate at Kiev, whilst generating some bite,
never really sustains full tension.
The orchestral
recording pays tribute to some fine sectional and solo work
from the Berlin orchestra. One can certainly hear that this
is a live performance, with some audience coughing along
the way unlike those sleek Brazilian-waxed discs that purport
to be live but have been depilated to within an inch of
their lives. The principal trumpet has quite a big, fat
vibrato – more Harry James than Harry Mortimer – and that
will take some getting used to, but at least it’s characterful
in that old Russian brass school way. The winds make a full
contribution, chording throughout is good, but the impression,
as with Várjon’s own recording, remains constrained.
So, this is
a disc very much for those into “hybrid multichannel” recording.
Neither performance dents the market place otherwise and
the coupling, whilst not uninteresting, will probably prove
undesirable.
Jonathan
Woolf
for
details 
Dénes Várjon
(piano)
[65.46]
