Search - Sergey Rachmaninov, Mariss Jansons, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra :: Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 3; Symphonic Dances

Fine performance and excellent remastering

John Grabowski | USA | 02/20/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This recording bothers me. It's not the performance by Mariss Jansons and the St. Petersburgers, who are very fine, but rather the remastering. I ordered this CD not realizing I already had it in a different issue. While I knew I already had a Jansons recording of the Rach 3rd Symphony, for some reason I thought it was with the Philadelphia Orchestra and never bothered to check my collection. Lucky for me I didn't, or I wouldn't have gotten this recording, which would have been my loss. This "Great Artists of the Century" reissue sounds different, and while the change isn't huge, I hear lots of nuance and color now that are absent the original: that recording is fuzzier, "grayer," with no ambient quality--the orchestra sounds encased in dead air. In this reissue, without the engineers seemingly changing much in the overall sound, there is much more detail, especially in the strings. I even compared them again to make sure I just wasn't merely listening to the original in a bad mood, but I had the same reaction.



This bothers me because I've always gone out of my way when evaluating recordings to distinguish between performance and sound. I try to "hear through" the sonics and while sometimes this requires some guesswork, I had always thought I did a decent job of hearing the music and not the sound. I would have never dreamed that just slight alterations in mastering could produce such a different impression, and now I wonder how many other performances I've possibly over- or under-rated because of the engineering.



This performance is very good. It's not the best I've ever heard--that belongs to the very first recording of the Third ever made, with Rachmaninoff himself conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra (1940). There's nothing extreme to Jansons' interpretation, no revelations, little in the way of risk-taking (listen to Maazel, Berlin Philharmonic for that), but if you're looking for a straight-ahead, well-felt performance, in a record that (now) sounds very good, this is it. There are some moments of great sensitivity here, such as in the slow movement and one of my favorite passages in the first movement, which I will cite bar by bar when I get my hands on a score. There's also a great moment in the first movement, again with those glorious strings, that reminds me, eerily, of part of the first movement of Bartok's Concerto for Strings, Percussion and Celeste. The St. Petersburgers respond to the music as though it's in their blood, which it probably is.



The Symphonic Dances are, well, the Symphonic Dances. If you love them you'll probably like these--I'm indifferent to them. (I would have much-prefferred his "Isle of the Dead" as the filler.) This is a very worthwhile release and highly recommended, however. Just make sure you get this "Great Artists" version and not the original issue."

Exemplary Rachmaninov

Paul Bubny | Maplewood, NJ United States | 04/30/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Mariss Jansons recorded Rachmaninov's three symphonies separately in the early '90s; this remastering imparts more clarity and bite to the first and finest of those recordings. As the liner notes imply, Jansons can be idiosyncratic in this composer's music, and in the Third Symphony that manifests itself in a distinctly "Russian" orchestral sound for a work that was apparently composed with the satiny-smooth Philadelphia Orchestra in mind. But the grittier timbres help bring out the characteristically Rachmaninovesque melancholy of the writing, as Jansons also highlights its taut construction. The Symphonic Dances are if anything even finer; Jansons never loses sight of the dance as well as symphonic elements, and there's a palpable sense of menace. Easily one of the best things this under-rated conductor has done."