Holst's The Planets

[Peter Power Pop]

The closest I can think of to The Planets, meaning a works in multiple sections of multifarious colours and moods is Enigma. Maybe Le Coq d'Or suite and Zarathustra, too. Musically I prefer the former.

I'm very definitely leaning in the direction of the Enigma Variations or Pictures at an Exhibition. And to a lesser extent Also Sprach Zarathustra.

Two problems with the Le Coq d'Or suite for me are:

a) It's not that well known (relatively speaking); and
b) It's only the suite – which can lead to wails of "Why the suite? Why not the whole thing?".

If you want to cut the chase to a quarter of an hour works, Rimsky's Grande Pâque russe is certainly worth anybody's attention. ...

Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Festival Overture (La Grande Pâque Russe) is enjoyable, but not hearing-it-fifty-times enjoyable.

The length of a piece doesn't bother me. Ideally, it'd be about half an hour. The Enigma Variations are/is perfect for that.

... But please, by all means, avoid Bolero 

Avoid Boléro? Can do. I have absolutely no trouble listening to it over and over again, but I don't think there's much variation in interpretations.

And that's my biggest grumble with Scheherazade at the moment: From what I've heard (so far), there don't seem to be any bad Scheherazades out there.

In anticipation of doing this "Let's review every Scheherazade!", I grabbed as many recordings as I could find. I now have 45 of them. I haven't heard them all yet, but I've dipped my toe in here and there to get a feel for how conductors approach it, and how different the recordings are, be they new, old, stereo, mono, Russian, European, American etc. (I also wanted to see if I can withstand the prospect of listening to close to a hundred Scheherazades.) Unfortunately, I've enjoyed every one I've heard. For a survey of a piece of classical music, that's not helpful at all.

By the way, as I was typing this response* (and working on another) I listened to Sascha Goetzel's 2014 recording of Scheherazade with the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra. It was great. I'm now listening to Ernest Ansermet's 1960 recording with L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. It's great.

This is a problem.

That's why I'm looking around for something else.


(*It sometimes takes me a while to type responses, because I'm an incessant self-editor.)

[Peter Power Pop]

Young Mr. Brian was 51. It isn't the biggest, it's never bombastic, and since it is perfectly playable, it is played.

OK. But who'd want to play it?

("Er, Bob, it's time to program some symphonies for the orchestra's upcoming season. I know you want to do Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony, but we only have 592 musicians available...")

Other musical landmarks comparable to the Planets? La Mer, the Sacre, Daphnis et Chloe, Pictures at an Exhibition. Or, if you want to do it for me, Vaughan Williams' Sixt. :-)

I thought about Daphnis et Chloé, with Ravel being my favourite 20th Century composer and all, but I think that particular ballet goes on way too long.

La Mer is well worth considering. (I hadn't thought of that one.)

As for Le Sacre du Printemps, I already have a favourite: Riccardo Chailly's 1987 recording with The Cleveland Orchestra.

Nevertheless, Le Sacre is entirely doable. It wouldn't be much of a stretch for me, because last year I went through a heavy-duty Stravinsky ballet phase, listening to as many of the three big ones (The Firebird, Petrushka, The Rite of Spring) as possible.

If I was to do a Vaughan Williams symphony, it'd be his 5th. I love, love, love the slow movement, and if I did a survey of the symphony I'd probably spend almost all of my time talking about that slow movement. Love it.

But I like the idea of La Mer.

[amw]

I was also going to recommend Le Sacre.  Though I suspect that's also going to have a ridiculous number of recordings.

Or maybe the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra or something.

[aukhawk]

Bartok's SPC runs to about 28 minutes (in my favourite version) and has a nice variety of colour and texture I think.

Recently covered in Building a Library, the top recommendation was ... [slight ashamed cough] "this version isn't actually available at the moment ... [brighter] ... but we've been told it is due to be re-issued later in 2015."

[Peter Power Pop]

The closest I can think of to The Planets, meaning a works in multiple sections of multifarious colours and moods is Enigma. Maybe Le Coq d'Or suite and Zarathustra, too. Musically I prefer the former.

If you want to cut the chase to a quarter of an hour works, Rimsky's Grande Pâque russe is certainly worth anybody's attention. But please, by all means, avoid Bolero 

Just a little bit more about the Enigma Variations.

This is ArkivMusic's list of Enigma recordings, sorted by conductor (with the number of releases for each in parentheses):

Ashkenazy, Vladimir (1)
Barbirolli, Sir John (4)
Barenboim, Daniel (3)
Beecham, Sir Thomas (2)
Begian, Harry (1)
Bernstein, Leonard (4)
Boughton, William (4)
Boult, Sir Adrian (10)
Davis, Sir Andrew (5)
Davis, Sir Colin (5)
Dutoit, Charles (1)
Elder, Mark (1)
Elgar, Sir Edward (4)
Gardiner, John Eliot (2)
Gibson, Sir Alexander (3)
Green, Eddie (1)
Haitink, Bernard (2)
Handley, Vernon (1)
Hurst, George (2)
Järvi, Paavo (1)
Jochum, Eugen (1)
Kleinert, Rolf (1)
Leaper, Adrian (2)
Levine, James (1)
Mackerras, Sir Charles (3)
Marriner, Sir Neville (1)
Mata, Eduardo (2)
Mehta, Zubin (1)
Menuhin, Yehudi (2)
Monteux, Pierre (6)
Norrington, Roger (2)
Ormandy, Eugene (1)
Previn, André (1)
Rattle, Simon (3)
Sargent, Sir Malcolm (1)
Sinopoli, Giuseppe (2)
Slatkin, Leonard (2)
Sleeper, Thomas M. (1)
Solti, Sir Georg (6)
Steinberg, William (1)
Stern, Michael (2)
Stokowski, Leopold (2)
Thomson, Bryden (1)
Toscanini, Arturo (5)
Weldon, George (1)
Wood, Sir Henry (1)
Wordsworth, Barry (1)
Zinman, David (1)

I counted, and that's 48 conductors.

48 is eminently manageable. (Even 58, if it turns out that Sir Adrian Boult actually did record it 10 times.)

The Enigma Variations are/is looking better and better for a survey.

Now to see how many recordings there are of Le Sacre du Printemps, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Pictures at an Exhibition, La Mer, Concerto for Orchestra etc.

[Pat B]

Now to see how many recordings there are of Le Sacre du Printemps...

Many. But you can cover a lot of that ground with the Decca (38) and Sony (10) sets.

ETA: I have the Sony but not the Decca.

[Brian]

I am all in favor of a Vaughan Williams Fifth bonanza!

Rezucha/Slovak PO is a pretty nifty Scheherazade, so maybe there are no bad Scheherazades. Oh, wait. There is one: Luxembourg/Emmanuel Krivine. And the Haitink/Concertgebouw recording my parents had when I was a kid never got me too excited, either.

I think Scheherazade is one of those pieces where almost anyone can do a very good job, but almost nobody can do a capital-G Great job. For me right now, that club is pretty much just Svetlanov, Beecham, and Schwarz. The Borusan Istanbul album is pretty sweet, though.

[André]

Kondrashin's is my hands down favourite Schéhérazade. But there are a couple of Stokowskis and even a surprisingly good Dutoit Montreal - with possibly the sweetest violin solo ever.

[Peter Power Pop]

I am all in favor of a Vaughan Williams Fifth bonanza!

That's definitely one to consider, but later.

Rezucha/Slovak PO is a pretty nifty Scheherazade, so maybe there are no bad Scheherazades. Oh, wait. There is one: Luxembourg/Emmanuel Krivine. And the Haitink/Concertgebouw recording my parents had when I was a kid never got me too excited, either.

I think Scheherazade is one of those pieces where almost anyone can do a very good job, but almost nobody can do a capital-G Great job. For me right now, that club is pretty much just Svetlanov, Beecham, and Schwarz. The Borusan Istanbul album is pretty sweet, though.

I spent most of yesterday listening to Scheherazade. I heard about five or six of them (I simply played one after the other), and they were all mighty enjoyable. I'm listening to it again today, and am halfway through the Beecham version. And that's great too. (Even the ultra-cheapy by the Radio Symphonieorchester Ljubljana, conducted by Anton Nanut, was fine.)

Now that I've heard a few, I honestly think Scheherazade is one of those conductor-proof pieces, where you can't really mess it up – unless you're someone like Roger Norrington*, who has "ideas" about how the piece "should" go.

And all of that makes a survey pretty pointless. As I mentioned elsewhere (or maybe I didn't – who knows?), I might as well put every recording of Scheherazade at number one, and say to people: "Look, buy any Scheherazade. It's gonna be good".

I can't pick 'em apart from each other. Despite having having 45 Scheherazades on the hard drive, and wanting to hear them all, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not the man for a Scheherazade survey.

I say that with a very heavy heart, because another forum user here who shall remain nameless (unless he wants to be named) helped me out enormously with some Scheherazades, going above and beyond the call of duty in his efforts. I want to apologise profusely for making the effort he went to a waste of time. Many apologies, O Fellow Forum User.

I hope there's a lot of interpretative difference in the other pieces that have been suggested. I'm really hoping there's a piece of music that can be messed big-time. Are there any atrocious recordings of the Enigma Variations, La Mer, Pictures at an Exhibition, Also Sprach Zarathustra etc.? If so, I want to hear them.

This survey thing is harder than I thought. The Planets one was easy because there was a wide range of interpretations. But choosing another work... Boy oh boy, this is tricky.


(*Sorry about picking on poor Roger there – but he was just the first conductor I thought of who goes off the deep end interpretatively, for reasons know only to the conductor.)

[Peter Power Pop]

[Snip]

Rezucha/Slovak PO is a pretty nifty Scheherazade, so maybe there are no bad Scheherazades. Oh, wait. There is one: Luxembourg/Emmanuel Krivine. And the Haitink/Concertgebouw recording my parents had when I was a kid never got me too excited, either.

Actually, I started listening to the Bernstein/New York Philharmonic and found it lethargic (with the solo violin out of tune in places, as well as the lower strings having a bit of iffy intonation). So I guess there can be the occasional not-great Scheherazade.

[Peter Power Pop]

Kondrashin's is my hands down favourite Schéhérazade. But there are a couple of Stokowskis and even a surprisingly good Dutoit Montreal - with possibly the sweetest violin solo ever.

Thanks to your enthusiasm, I'm now listening to it. Mighty nice.

It's on Spotify:

Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade, Op. 35 (Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam* / Kirill Kondrashin)

And YouTube:

1st movement
https://www.youtube.com/v/AMb1P5o7zo8

2nd movement
https://www.youtube.com/v/iMbj1_zuMAQ

3rd movement
https://www.youtube.com/v/fzwxdzaLil4

4th movement
https://www.youtube.com/v/dD3e_S4ufJQ


(*I so want to call it "Hamsterdam".)

[Mirror Image]

Personally, I couldn't imagine listening to dozens and dozens of recordings of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. I enjoy the work, but not enough to warrant maybe 1-2 listens a year.

[Peter Power Pop]

Personally, I couldn't imagine listening to dozens and dozens of recordings of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. I enjoy the work, but not enough to warrant maybe 1-2 listens a year.

That's what I've been finding these last two days. Listening to nothing but that is becoming a bit of a blur.

[aukhawk]

(*I so want to call it "Hamsterdam".)

Can I insert the image of Hamster jam into your mind?

[Christo]

(*I so want to call it "Hamsterdam".)

Amstelodamum. For you.

[Peter Power Pop]

Can I insert the image of Hamster jam into your mind?

Yes please.

[Pat B]

Actually, I started listening to the Bernstein/New York Philharmonic and found it lethargic (with the solo violin out of tune in places, as well as the lower strings having a bit of iffy intonation). So I guess there can be the occasional not-great Scheherazade.

Ormandy's is pretty bad. For a long time it was the only one I had, chosen when I was a student because it was cheap and coupled with the two Rimsky pieces I had played in student orchestras. Then, hearing the Reiner, I discovered what I had been missing. I have since added Svetlanov/BBC Legends, Fricsay, and that Bernstein, all of which are better than the Ormandy.

I think I like the fiery Svetlanov the best, but the Reiner (which I just listened to) is certainly very, very good.

But I'm with Mirror Image: I can't imagine binge-listening to this piece. (Actually, binge listening to anything isn't very appealing to me, but if I was going to do it, it wouldn't be Scheherazade.)

[Brian]

I think I like the fiery Svetlanov the best

Ain't just you. Svetlanov/BBC is my #1.

[Pat B]

Ain't just you. Svetlanov/BBC is my #1.

Right, I think one of your comments was how I found out about it.

[André]

Isn't the Ormandy cut  ?

FWIW, there are surveys in American Record Guide that help clear and choose for those warhorses. Except that the heavy hand of Don Vroon can be felt when it comes to editorialize about what's "good" and what's "bad". And his taste and mine don't necessarily coincide.

La Mer is an easy pick. Neat piece in 3 movements that allow for differences in mood and character, orchestral colours and tempi. Mind you, it might end up being a contest between the French and les autres, or between pre-1960 recordings and post 1970 ones. The interregnum (1960s) is a decade in which the music was in search of an identity.