Search - Modest Mussorgsky, Sergey Prokofiev, Thomas Schippers :: Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition; Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky

Legendary Recording Available Again!

D. DEGEORGE | Ellicott City, MD USA | 09/30/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This recording is the conventional-CD version of the same recording that has also been produced as an SACD. The Amazon customer reviews under the listing for the latter are both 5-star reviews and more accurately reflect the justified fame of Thomas Schippers' performance of Alexander Nevsky. One of those reviewers states "This recording enjoys legendary status among sound and music enthusiasts alike."



Perhaps this "legendary status" led to too-high expectations on the part of the two others who have reviewed the conventional CD issue as of this writing, leading to their disappointment in not finding it to be amazing. Even so, to my ears it is one of the best Nevskys one can find.



The reviewers of the SACD were quite pleased with the recording; and while the multi-channel sound no doubt contributed to their satisfaction, the conventional CD also benefits from the remastering.



I have been comparing the LP and CD side by side, and I hear very slightly less stridency in the CD, but the difference is subtle, and I would not call the CD at all "muffled." Neither the CD nor LP of this 1961 recording is fully up to today's standards, but it would be a miracle if they were. New York Philharmonic recordings of that era were generally on the bright side, often to the point of shrillness. The frequency response seemed to peak in the same range as the fundamental frequencies of the violins, and then to drop off in the higher-order harmonics, sacrificing richness while unpleasantly concentrating the sound on the fundamental and perhaps the first harmonic, making for a very hard sound. This quality always was there, and the remastering has not been able to correct it. Of course the 43-year-old magnetic master tapes could have deteriorated a bit over time, possibly attenuating some of the highest frequencies, but one would have to have very golden ears to detect the difference. Let me reassure the reader that anyone who remembers Schippers' Alexander Nevsky with fondness should not hesitate to replace his/her LP with this CD.



Schippers and the New York Philharmonic deliver a very lively but straightforward and tidy account of this music. I suppose one could complain of a lack of personality in the interpretation, and there are a few opportunities that Schippers missed in which he could have pushed the tempo ahead, or exaggerated a sforzando to intensify the excitement, but a by-the-book playing of such an exciting piece is still exciting.



Yuri Temirkanov and Valery Gergiev are today's foremost interpreters of Russian music. Unfortunately, I have not had the opportunity to hear their complete recordings of Nevsky, but I have listened to the clips here on Amazon. While excerpts cannot convey how successful these conductors are in producing an artistically and emotionally affecting whole, I was at least able learn something about their selection of tempi. Neither of these maestros takes The Battle on the Ice at the speed of Schippers; and while speed is by no means the only way of achieving excitement, it usually helps. That being the case, I find it difficult to conceive of how some could find Schippers' reading unexceptional. Another highly regarded performance in my collection is the better-recorded performance by André Previn with the Los Angeles Philharmonic et al.; but it definitely drags at times.



By the way, the sound that Telarc provides Previn is objectively superior to that which Sony provides Schippers, as are the sonics of other recent recordings. Nevertheless, I find a certain thrill in the artificially brilliant sound of the Schippers (in spite of the objections of the audiophile in me), whether on the Sony CD or the Columbia LP.



Finally, the Reiner recording, also "legendary," is very exciting. To keep comparisons manageable I concentrated on The Battle on the Ice, and I found it interesting that Reiner began the movement faster than Schippers but ultimately took 35 seconds longer to get to the point where the battle begins to wind down (9:28 versus 8:53). Reiner sustains interest, however, by varying the tempo more than Schippers. The sonics of the Sony production are more open and brilliant, but the violins sound better on the RCA (Reiner). The powerful Chicago brass and woodwinds sound kind of rinky-dink and toy-like on this recording, though, and overall the RCA recording (from 1959) sounds a bit pinched. The Reiner performance is sung in English, which offends original-language purists. Still, I would not want to be without either the Reiner or the Schippers.



Pictures (recorded 1965, originally released 1969) benefits from advances in sound quality in the four years that had elapsed since Alexander. (1962 was the year many record companies switched to low-noise tape, thus enabling a greater dynamic range and less need for the remastering engineers to apply noise reduction, which had varying degrees of unfavorable side effects.) The performance is excellent but unexceptional.



Because I can imagine a recording with better sonics combined with a performance that misses no opportunity to be truly amazing, I am giving the Schippers only four stars. This does not mean, however, that I have heard, or know of, any better than this.

"

Medium-good readings from a medium-good conductor

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 06/17/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Thomas Schippers had good looks and enough WASP charm to qualify as the next big thing among young American conductors in the era of Bernstein. He was given lots of opportunities, but except for an outstanding CD of music by Samuel Barber (his mentor), Schippers' recordings tend to be only medium good, and some of his biggest assignments (like a La Forza del Destino with the young Leontyne Price on RCA) sound almost amateurish.



This pairing of two Russian staples is competent. Alexander Nevsky lacks fire and excitement; the chorus is recorded too far back and sings in a gritty style with wooden, memorize-each-syllable Russian. Lili Chookasian is quite lovely in her solo aria on the battlefield, however. Any conductor--perhaps even a member of the audience--can stand in front of a great orchestra like the NY Phil. and elicit a respectable reading of Picutres at an Exhibition. The trick is to get jaded musicians to sit up and do something special, which Schippers fails to do here. As Mr. Richman notes below, the sonics are disappointingly muffled given that Sony used its latest technology for this new reissue."