Rimsky-Korsakov recommendations?

[Elgarian Redux]

Rimsky-Korsakov recommendations?

To be avoided, if possible.

Ooomf ... [I just experienced what Bob Dylan describes as 'a corkscrew to my heart'.]

[Elgarian Redux]

Browsing Amazon, I came across this for about £1 and thought, 'why not?' Is anyone familiar with it?

[Jo498]

Ansermet recorded Sheherazade, Antar & several opera suites.
This is in early stereo (some maybe mono) and with the characteristic sound of his orchestra de la suisse romande that some love, others hate. But it might be an interesting alternative to Russian recordings. I am no expert here and only have one 2fer anthology of Ansermet's Rimsky but I remember that I used to like them.

[San Antone]

Yowch!

Ooomf ... [I just experienced what Bob Dylan describes as 'a corkscrew to my heart'.]

Sorry.  Purely a personal feeling.  That said, R-K was the first composer who got me interested in classical music, and for that fact alone, I should have more empathy for those who still find his music rewarding.

[Elgarian Redux]

But it might be an interesting alternative to Russian recordings.

Yes indeed, and that's what I'm after: I'm not chasing 'the best' (whatever that may mean), but rather, illuminating alternatives. Thanks for this.

[Elgarian Redux]

Just been listening to Ansermet's Antar on Youtube (thanks for the tip, Jo498). Gosh this is different indeed. Worth travelling further with, maybe - so I've found a copy of the Ansermet 2-CD Rimsky set and bought it. Apparently the Antar was the first ever stereo Decca recording.

Tell you what though, folks - so far, no matter who is performing it (I am as I write listening to Ansermet in lo-fi on Youtube), I am growing to adore Antar utterly. It's like being 16 and discovering Scheherazade all over again, with exotic imagined images and scenes tumbling over one another, as the music evolves: the musical movie in the mind.

[vandermolen]

Morton Gould Chicago SO is my favourite recording of Antar. There is a thematic connection with Miaskovsky's 21st Symphony. The box set features a mini CD-sized version of the psychedelic LP sleeve.

[Cato]

I came across this work earlier today:


Suite from Pan Voyevoda  (The score is for two pianos and will drive you nuts, because the music for the pianos is side by side, not vertical!)

[Roasted Swan]

Morton Gould Chicago SO is my favourite recording of Antar. There is a thematic connection with Miaskovsky's 21st Symphony. The box set features a mini CD-sized version of the psychedelic LP sleeve.

I'd forgotten that was in that box - thanks for the reminder!

[Elgarian Redux]

Morton Gould Chicago SO is my favourite recording of Antar. There is a thematic connection with Miaskovsky's 21st Symphony. The box set features a mini CD-sized version of the psychedelic LP sleeve.

Thanks for the tip. Brian recommended this earlier, and I've been trying to find it on CD, but I can't. LP only. There's the Gould box set on CD, but I don't want that, especially not for more than £100. So I might be stuck on this one.

[Florestan]

Any recommendations for the piano quintet? I heard it on car radio and loved it.

[Jo498]

Just been listening to Ansermet's Antar on Youtube (thanks for the tip, Jo498). Gosh this is different indeed. Worth travelling further with, maybe - so I've found a copy of the Ansermet 2-CD Rimsky set and bought it. Apparently the Antar was the first ever stereo Decca recording.

I was never the greatest fan of Sheherazade, I probably encountered it "too late" when I felt that I was past the flashy programmatic orchestral spectacular but I first got Antar and the numbered symphonies (both not very interesting) I think in a brilliant classics box of which, however, the best things were probably the suites like Christmas Eve, Kitezh etc. I was quite fond of these discs for a while about 20 years ago, for some time I preferred Rimsky to Tchaikovsky...
Later I got a bigger box, again by Brilliant Classics that doubled the smaller box and had lots of operas as well. But I don't think I ever got into these operas (some of them were historic Russian recordings).
But I was sufficiently fond of Antar and these suites to get the Ansermet as well when it came out on Aussie eloquence.

[Florestan]

I heartily recommend this 3-CD box. Russian singers and mostly Russian pianists ensure idiomatic performances. My Russian is very rusty so I understood, say, one word in ten --- but the music is so expressive and beautiful as to render the literal meaning of the words superfluous. After all, it's Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet, Tyutchev, Heine and their ilk, so what can they sing about if not (unrequited) love and (melancholy) nature? In such poetry just one word is enough to establish the mood. Two is already a confirmation, while three is a downright synopsis. 

[Elgarian Redux]

I was never the greatest fan of Sheherazade, I probably encountered it "too late" when I felt that I was past the flashy programmatic orchestral spectacular but I first got Antar and the numbered symphonies (both not very interesting) I think in a brilliant classics box of which, however, the best things were probably the suites like Christmas Eve, Kitezh etc. I was quite fond of these discs for a while about 20 years ago, for some time I preferred Rimsky to Tchaikovsky...
Later I got a bigger box, again by Brilliant Classics that doubled the smaller box and had lots of operas as well. But I don't think I ever got into these operas (some of them were historic Russian recordings).
But I was sufficiently fond of Antar and these suites to get the Ansermet as well when it came out on Aussie eloquence.

I confess that I never went through a phase of finding Scheherazade a 'flashy ... orchestral spectacular', but I did love its programmatic aspect right from the beginning, and never fell out of love with it in 60 years. I kept on accumulating other music and just took Scheherazade along with me.

The weird thing though is that I've listened to Antar several times over the years, and it made no impact on me at all - until NOW. (Why now? It's not exactly hard to listen to, is it?) And here I am today, its tunes running through my head even when I'm not listening to it, accompanied by dazzlingly coloured mental images of gazelles, fearsome giant birds, ruined cities, desert winds, and magic temptresses. Bloomin' marvellous!
 

[Spotted Horses]

I would agree with comments that Ansermet's Rimsky-Korsakov is extraordinary. Scheherazade sound like Wagner under Karajan, but sparkles under Ansermet. There is a little piece called Dubinushka which is very rarely recorded, but is a little gem in Ansermet's recording.

[Karl Henning]

I confess that I never went through a phase of finding Scheherazade a 'flashy ... orchestral spectacular'....

Nor me. Not even during my most 19^th-c.-music resistant era did I feel the least inclination to be dismissive of Scheherazade.

[Florestan]

The weird thing though is that I've listened to Antar several times over the years, and it made no impact on me at all - until NOW. (Why now? It's not exactly hard to listen to, is it?) And here I am today, its tunes running through my head even when I'm not listening to it, accompanied by dazzlingly coloured mental images of gazelles, fearsome giant birds, ruined cities, desert winds, and magic temptresses. Bloomin' marvellous!

Why then? Because the stars aligned and the conditions were met at that exact time --- for you. Because music is not a disembodied, abstract structure valid for everyone, everywhere, any time, but a living being, heavily dependent on circumstances. Rain and interesting times can kill it just as easily as drought and boredom. There is no Antar as an abstract and immutable text --- only Antar as a concrete and ever-changing performance, to which concrete and ever-changing individuals respond according to their physical and temporal circumstances. One listens to it a hundred times and makes nothing of it --- and out of a sudden the 101st listen results in an epiphany. Why? Well, because the stars aligned and the conditions were met at that exact time --- for them.

[Karl Henning]

Our ears are not, today, the ears we heard with erewhile.

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

Beecham's Scheherazade, for me, is one of the finest recordings of this masterpiece:

[Florestan]

Our ears are not, today, he ears we heard with erewhile.

Music according to Heraclitus: one cannot hear it twice.