COMPOSERS: Shchedrin
LABELS: BMG Melodiya
WORKS: Carmen Suite; Anna Karenina
PERFORMER: Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra/ Gennady Rozhdestvensky, USSR SO/Evgeny Svetlanov
CATALOGUE NO: 74321 36908 2 ADD(1968/79)
A warm CD welcome, at long last, to Rozhdestvensky’s account of one of the most striking of all Carmen transcriptions. Shchedrin’s scoring for strings and percussion works well, given the conductor’s loving shaping of the string lines, and you can be sure Rozhdestvensky relishes the jaunty reworkings of ‘Dragon d’Alcala’ and the Toreador Song. The 1967 sound is Melodiya at its best, which can’t be said of the companion piece recorded over a decade later. But this gripping distillation of his three-act ballet is vividly shaped by Svetlanov. David Nice
Shchedrin: Carmen Suite; Anna Karenina
A warm CD welcome, at long last, to Rozhdestvensky’s account of one of the most striking of all Carmen transcriptions. Shchedrin’s scoring for strings and percussion works well, given the conductor’s loving shaping of the string lines, and you can be sure Rozhdestvensky relishes the jaunty reworkings of ‘Dragon d’Alcala’ and the Toreador Song. The 1967 sound is Melodiya at its best, which can’t be said of the companion piece recorded over a decade later. But this gripping distillation of his three-act ballet is vividly shaped by Svetlanov. David Nice
Our rating
5
Published: January 20, 2012 at 2:38 pm