Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (Maazel, Cleeveland Orchestra)

Album : Pictures at an Exhibition

Composer(s) : Mussorgsky
Performers : Lorin Maazel (coductor), The Cleveland Orchestra
Release date : 1979
Label : Telarc
Catalog # : CD-80042
Number of discs : 1
Genre : Classical
Total size : 52,2 MB
Total time : 00 :40 :48
Individual track details :
01. Mussorgsky: Night On Bald Mountain [00:10:28]
02. Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition [00:30:20]
@ 192 Kbit/s mp3
Comments:
The CD issue of Telarc's famous Mussorgsky coupling deserves a special accolade.
It represents the high-water mark of
this small american company's extraordinarily confident creation of a highly-spe
ctacular and yet natural orchestral balance,
with the use of simple microphone techniques. Jack Renner, the company's Preside
nt, was well aware of his debt to the late
Bob Fine of Mercury, responsible for the pioneering series of mono recordings of
the fifties and stereo recordings of the sixties,
using at first one and then two or three microphones; also the impressive late f
ifties RCA stereo recordings achieved with similar
techniques, recording Reiner in Chicago and Munch in Boston. Yet the Telarc digi
tal recordings, following in this same tradition
achieved new standards, especially in the glowing acoustic of Severance Hall, Cl
eveland. The series made with the Cleveland Symphonic
Winds under Fennell and the full Cleveland Orchestra under Maazel create a vivid
impression of realism, of the full panoply of wind
or orchestral tone spread out in a natural perspective before the listener, the
only quirk of balance being an occasionally
over-insistent bass drum.
The coupling of Pictures and Night on the Bare Mountain dates from 1979 (the yea
r of Decca's digital LP Debut with Boskovsky's
New Year Strauss family concert) but is in my view in advance of anything that t
he multi-national companies were achieving digitally
at that time. The sonic splendour of the closing picture, ''The Great Gate of Ki
ev'', with brass and strings converging in a glorious
amplitude of tone, capped by the cymbals, is one of the most exciting climaxes I
have heard on a disc. It richness is anticipated at
the very beginning of Night on the Bare Mountain (it comes first) which is arres
ting from the opening bars. Both performances are fine
ones . . . . Abbado (DG) and especially Solti on Decca (where the clarity is cli
nical) offer rather sharper detail, but the Telarc
climaxes are special.
-- Ivan March, Gramophone