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Reviews: Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky (Stokowski Transcriptions) - Serebrier

Reviews: 5

Site review by Castor September 13, 2005
Performance:   Sonics:  
The text for this review has been moved to the new site. You can read it here:

http://www.HRAudio.net/showmusic.php?title=3229#reviews

Site review by Polly Nomial March 2, 2006
Performance:   Sonics:    
The text for this review has been moved to the new site. You can read it here:

http://www.HRAudio.net/showmusic.php?title=3229#reviews

Review by Coffee Kev October 21, 2005 (10 of 10 found this review helpful)
Performance:   Sonics:  
Recordings like this are what consumers need to hear if SACD is every going to succeed. It is stellar in every way.

Stokowski is a hard conductor to emulate because his personality is so large. Few conductors come close. Serebrier appears to be cut of the same cloth. Instead of trying to impersonate Stokowski, he appears to conduct from his own bravura, so there is no self-conciousness. It makes me wish we had him here in Chicago, as our low key Barenboim is near retirement. The recording succeeds for this reason alone.

But, wait, there's more...

The sound is nearly perfect. I can't think of another SACD that so fulfills the medium's promise. The sound is huge! The bass whacks hit you in the gut, just like they would in concert. The strings, already sweetened by the free bowing and lush writing, are sweeter than you've ever heard in redbook. The dynamic range is awesome. The bells and other novel instruments Stokowski arranged in this Russian music are all nicely recorded. I can think of no other medium, digital or analog, that would reproduce them as well.

Stokowski's own recordings are not this good.

The music is great. The performance is great. The sound it great.

If I wanted to convince a friend who doesn't like classical music to understand why I do, I'd play this disc for him.

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Review by Arthur May 15, 2006 (4 of 4 found this review helpful)
Performance:   Sonics:  
I was never a big Stokowski fan: I disliked the gimickry. But I remember hearing his Symphonic Synthesis from Boris over the radio in my teens and I enjoyed it immensely. But a single listening to his Pictures many years ago was disappointing. So while I was interested in this disc for the Synthesis and for Serebrier whose conducting I like, I had continually found a reason to pass on it.
But at my local Tower Records I was told it was being deleted, so I decided to take the plunge.
I shouldn't have waited so long: this disc is a total success!

The Synthesis is everything I remembered, only better: great sound, no ridiculous spotlighting ala Stoky himself, and straight but cultured interpretation. But the big winner for me was the Pictures! Wow! I'd always loved the piano version but been ambivalent about the Ravel orchestration. But this version is great: for once this is a Russian work, not some sort of cosmopolitan mish-mash.

To top it all off the transcription of the Tchaikovsky song "Solitude" is wonderful. I'd love to encounter this as an encore sometime topping off an evening of Russian rousers!

Get it fast. Evidently it's going to be gone.

(PS. I've only listened in 2-channel as my living room is torn apart.)

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Review by gonzostick November 11, 2009 (4 of 9 found this review helpful)
Performance:   Sonics:  
DO NOT MISS THIS DISC!!!

Stokowski's Technicolor orchestrations and arrangements of Mussorgsky are played to within an inch of their lives by Maestro Serebrier and this lovely orchestra. Yes, the string section lacks the ultimate suavity of the Philadelphia strings under Stokowski, but we will never see or hear his like, again.

The sound is excellent and Serebrier puts his own stamp on his interpretations, instead of just following his mentor's interpretations.

GREAT disc of wonderful repertoire! Worth every cent!!!

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