Search - a. Khachaturian :: Khachaturian: Gayne; Spartacus; Masquerade [Hybrid SACD] [Germany]

Barely adequate....

Hannibal | Los Angeles, CA USA | 06/10/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"This is short shrift. - Not even an hour's worth of music, and "Gayane" (Khachaturian's finest score) is allowed only 18 minutes of it.



Conductor Yuri Simonov conducts with all the rhythm and excitement of a sledgehammer and gives a routine run-through of the bits and pieces that have survived the editor's shears.



"Spartacus" and "Masquerade" are treated just as shamefully.



I had hoped that as an SACD recording the listener might be in for something special, but forget about it. In fact I am tempted to dispute the claim of its DSD provenance, and suffice it to say that this was recorded in 1994, and to my ears at least, Lazarev's 1993 "Red Book" recording with the Bolshoi is definitely superior.



All of this begs the ultimate question: How could the greatest of all recorded performances - Tjeknavorian's, with the National Philharmonic on RCA - produced by the great Charles Gerhardt and engineered by the famous Bob Auger have turned into such a sonic disaster when transfered to CD?



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