MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

 

alternatively
CD: MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS
Sound Samples & Downloads

Nikolay Andreyevich RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908)
Suite from The snow maiden (1880-1881) [12:34]
Sadko – musical picture, op.5 (1869, rev. 1892) [10:53]
Suite from Mlada (1889-1890) [18:24]
Suite from Le coq d’or (1907) [28:13]
Seattle Symphony/Gerard Schwarz
rec. Benaroya Hall, Seattle, Washington, USA, 9, 18, 30 March, 19 April 2011
NAXOS 8.572787 [70:04]

Experience Classicsonline



This new Seattle Symphony/Schwarz release comes hard on the heels of two earlier discs (Scheherazade and Capriccio Espagnol) in what is becoming a valuable series devoted to Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestral music.
 
While the focus this time around has shifted predominantly to suites derived from some of Rimsky's typically quirky and whimsical operas, the standard of musical execution remains as high as before.
 
Gerard Schwarz, who recorded these performances last year during his 26th - and final - season as the Seattle Symphony’s Music Director, has built up an orchestra that is self-evidently well drilled. Simultaneously, however, its members play with apparent spontaneity and imagination, as well as the verve and idiomatic style required by these colourful scores. They also display a degree of conviction in the music that is frequently missing from other accounts that treat it - perhaps misled by its surface glitter - more superficially.
 
The Seattle orchestra's by now familiar characteristics - plangent strings, hugely characterful winds and strong, assertive brass - are evident right from the opening suite from The snow maiden and are maintained consistently throughout all the tracks.
 
The disc’s longest continuous piece, the “musical picture” Sadko, offers perhaps the most striking performance. Schwarz’s generally rather forthright and propulsive approach is nevertheless flexible enough to glory in Rimsky’s evocatively atmospheric and pictorial passages. The conductor’s expert ear for orchestral balance - aided by some very fine engineering from Dmitriy Lipay - uncovers lots of exquisite but otherwise frequently unheard detail.
 
The suite from the opera Mlada, developed by Rimsky from music he had contributed to an earlier and abortive collaborative project with fellow composers Borodin, Mussorgsky, Cui and Minkus, is the least familiar work on offer here. That said, its final cortege has had the occasional outing as an orchestral lollipop. Of its five individual movements, the central three are a series of attractive and quirky dances - Russian, Lithuanian and Indian - which rather makes one regret that the composer never tried his hand at a full-length ballet score. An exotic scenario like that of the Minkus/Delibes collaboration La source, recently revived by the Opera National de Paris, would surely have suited him down to the ground.
 
The suite from Le coq d’or is the most substantial on the disc and is delivered not only with the appropriate mixture of exoticism, swagger and aplomb but with lashings of musical wit too, as Rimsky relishes every opportunity to poke fun at his opera’s ridiculously pompous and self-important characters. Schwarz and his orchestra play so expertly and with such respect for the composer’s characteristic idiom that everything comes up as fresh as new paint.
 
Anyone who has already invested in the two earlier volumes in this series need not hesitate to add this third disc to their collection. Others can invest in all three with the greatest confidence and the prospect of enjoying them all immensely.

Rob Maynard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.