"For reasons that make no sense Amazon is offering these superb performances by Jansons of the complete Rachmaninov symphonies at rock bottom pricing. Included are that splendid and masterful late work, The Symphonic Dances. As an extra bonus EMI adds that darkest and most morbid of tone poems, "The Isle of the Dead". All this for a little over a dozen dollars! This has been accomplished without any overlapping of the symphonies from one to the next. In our new petro-barter economy, this works out to less than a gallon a symphony!
Jansons gives an exciting, quite forward presentation of the less popular 1st symphony. I have long been in a small minority that enjoy this piece, despite its admitted repetitiousness. The huge fanfare setting the stage may never be lived up to in this work, but it does set the table for the works to come. The far superior 2nd symphony deserves an outstanding performance, and Jansons delivers, with an almost Haitink-like control, presenting the entire musical architecture in razor sharp focus. So vital and important is the 2nd in any complete set of the Rachmnainoff symphonies that had this version not been a top rendition even the bargain basement give-a-way price would not have induced me to recommend this package. No worry with the Third, either, another excellent example, and very well-recorded.
The other works included are equally well done. I prefer them to versions by Previn, whose reputation in Rachmaninov I do not wholly share, and Ashkenazy, who never produces the beautiful bell tones he could as a pianist when he leads an orchestra. (This is apparently his attention, but I dislike the gritty tones and harshness in Rachmaninov, and have taken to labeling the ex-pianist 'Vlad the Impaler' for running roughshod over Rachmaninov's beautiful lyricism and delightfully colorful orchestrations.) The dark shadows engulfing all these works are only relieved when illuminated by sudden intense fragments of color, like stained glass windows in a Russian Orthodox church that burst into miraculous display when the sun comes out on a winter's day.
The Symphonic Dances will always belong to the Philadelphia Orchestra - but this is another glorious version of this fabulous music, and no poor cousin in Janson's echt Russian delivery. (Anyone looking without success can find the Sybaritic Philadelphians Symphonic Dances on a budget Sony potpourri Ballet Music by Offenbach, Rachmaninov, & Smetana)
All in all - if you haven't yet picked up any Rachmaninov this is your big chance.
Highest possible rating!
"
Superb and a great value
Martin R. Lash | Sister Bay, Wisc | 12/08/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"EMI has issued this set as 3 CD's for the price of one. Its a great value and Jansons' conducting of the 3 symphonies is superb. The second is particularly dramatic. You also get the wonderful and dark Isle of the Dead and the composer's Symphonic Dances. At this price it can't be beat.
Rachmaninov fans need not hesitate."
Very Russian performances at super-bargain price -- unmissa
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 04/11/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Scanning the growing catalog in EMI's "Triplet" series, certain releases jump out, and this is certainly one. Jansons has a family conneciton to the St. Petersburg Phil., since his father, Arvids Jansons, was picked by the great Yevgeny Mravinsky to be his assistant in 1946 when Mariss was three (the orchestra was then the Leningrad Phil., of course). Now that the son is far more famous internationally than the father, it's odd that he has made so few recordings with his famil;y orchestra, so to speak.
This set of Rachmaninov symphonies represents the best of them, highly praised when they first appeared beginning in the late Eighties. Each symphony is as accomplished as the other -- musicians and conductor have this idiom in their bones. EMI's recorded sound has lots of visceral impact (they seemed to do better with their Russian venue at the time than, say, Philips was doing for Gergiev).
Casual listeners will probably not be interested in the sprawling and uninspired Sym. #1, but everything else here is prime, ultra lush Rachmaninov, and at a three-for-one price, one can hardly argue. In all, it would be hard to find an integral set of the Rachmaninov symphonies (not forgetting the late Symphonic Dances) to equal Jansons' versions."
NOT A MORNING PERSON
DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 05/02/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Morning and Rachmaninov seem not to have been intended for each other. The final item on the third of these three discs is the Symphonic Dances, which were R's last major composition. The three dances were originally intended for a ballet, and they denote noon, twilight and midnight, morning being unrepresented. The entire scope of this set can also be thought of as a resume of R's total career. Viewing it as a single day, we may take the second symphony and the tone poem Isle of the Dead (dark though that is) as representing the composer's noontide; and the Symphonic Dances and third symphony as some late hour. Morning is here too, but it is having to struggle. The Scherzo in D minor is R's earliest dated composition, but it did not receive its first performance until after his death. The story of the disastrous premiere of the first symphony is well enough known, conducted atrociously by Glazunov whether or not he was drunk as some allege. It was never performed again in the composer's lifetime and was reconstructed from his papers. You will hear its motto theme in the first Symphonic Dance, suggesting that R retained a fondness for it as if for a child who had died. Also here, alas, is the Vocalise in an orchestral arrangement. It might be good Ketelby, but as Rachmaninov it is almost a self-parody. I do not want it in any version, but I am sure this is a good one.
More certain is that the other performances are very good ones indeed. The three discs were recorded during the 90's, the first disc being the last recorded, from 1999. The recording of the first symphony seems less vivid than the sound the other two are given, this being more a matter of curiosity to me than criticism. Perhaps the decision was to darken the sound slightly, and understandably if so. Probably the composer's own sound in the first symphony is less vivid than in the others, and when it comes to the awesome Isle of the Dead of course vividness is the very last thing anyone will want. I love the way it is done here, with a sense of solemn dark beauty and stateliness rather than suggestive of Poe. As for the symphony, I like it. It is not the equal of its stablemates, sure, but I would still call it a fine late-romantic symphony, and you will hear it performed here with sympathy and understanding. At least you can say of Rachmaninov that he is never cheap, even in his finales. Try saying that of Tchaikovsky.
In all the three symphonies I sense that the St Petersburg players are at home with the composer's idiom, which is not of course a risky opinion. I am out of my depth with ethnic questions in the matter of musical interpretation, but I am in no doubt that Mravinsky seemed more authentic in the Tchaikovsky symphonies, with this very orchestra then entitled the Leningrad, than any westerner did, and I get the same impression here although I have not conducted comparisons. The sound is more westernised now than it was in Mravinsky's day, and to some extent I regret that although it is a small price for the political gain. What I will certainly give Jansons very high marks for is his ability to keep the first movements of the symphonies coherent. They are all to a fast pulse, but they go slow for long stretches too. Jansons has the confidence to go very slow when the expression calls for that, but I never felt any loss of overall grip. Another thing I want given full value is those great long-breathed tunes, like nobody else's. The symphonies do not feature these to the extent that the concertos do, but they are here still, in the first movement of no 3 for example but above all in the adagio of no 2, and I believe you are going to get your money's worth. Indeed in passing perhaps I should point out what probably needs no pointing out, namely that this set is a spectacular bargain.
The D minor scherzo is interesting and attractive, with the influence of Mendelssohn easy to detect, a very good thing in a scherzo. The Symphonic Dances are obviously a much bigger deal, the term `symphonic' referring to the scale of the pieces, not to their style. Among them the three dances come to over half an hour, only 3 or 4 minutes less than the 3-movement third symphony takes. This time I did carry out a comparison, and you may find it interesting. There is a brilliant Naxos disc of piano-duet works by Rachmaninov brilliantly and exuberantly performed by the greatly underrated Peter Donohoe with Martin Roscoe. This contains the Dances in an arrangement that I suppose is the composer's own. It is good enough to be his, and this disc is good enough for me to prefer the Dances done by the right pianists to even as good an orchestral account as we find here. Donohoe and Roscoe are rather faster in each piece, but the real difference is in the tone. There is no lack of vigour when required from Jansons, but there is, understandably, a valedictory feel to this late suite. As the duettists give them these works tell me that there was plenty of life in R yet, and if things had gone right there ought to have been. He still had three more years to live, when he died he was still only 70, and his death was from cancer not from decrepitude.
Anyhow, these are orchestral works, and this is an orchestral set that I can recommend thoroughly. From my own point of view I am glad to have acquired it before Charon comes calling for my fare across the dark waters, and it ought to give many years' value and enjoyment to many another."
Track Listings (5) - Disc #1
