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Site review by Castor August 13, 2007
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Performance: Sonics (MC): |
The main interest here is what I believe to be the first stereo recording of Strauss’s ‘Festmusik zur Feier des jähhrigen Bestehens des Kaiserriches Japan’. This was one of a number of works commissioned in 1940 from various composers to celebrate the (fictitious) 2600 anniversary of the Japanese Empire. Other composers who provided music for these celebrations included Ibert, Pizzetti and most famously Benjamin Britten, whose ‘Sinfonia da Requiem’ was rejected as unsuitable.
Strauss never responded well to commissions and sadly his Festmusik is for the most part a piece of empty bombast in which an enormous orchestra piles one ear-splitting climax upon another. Strauss divides the continuous sixteen-minute piece into five short sections and gave them titles, which though not in the published score, do give a flavour of what to expect. They are:
Seascape
Cherry-blossom Festival
Volcanic Eruption
Attack of the Samurai
Hymn of the Emperor
Oriental colour is provided by the use of temple gongs, but the excessively reverberant acoustic of the Rudolfinium in Prague prevents the audibility of any detail of the orchestration when the volume rises above mezzo forte, which is most of the time. The brass of the Czech PO rise manfully to the challenge of the piece with impressive fanfares while the strings have most of the quite attractive lyrical music.
Ashkenazy’s ‘Till Eulenspiegel’ is satisfactory but pretty unremarkable, lacking the wit and precision of George Szell’s marvellous performance on Sony, and some of the playing sounds decidedly scrappy, but again this may be due to the blurring effect of the recording.
‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ fares rather better with a most impressive opening and a forward momentum throughout that is most welcome. Once again, however, the reverberant acoustic causes detail to be lost as soon as the volume rises and the upper strings acquire an unpleasant shrillness.
As you will have gathered, Exton’s (1998) recording made in an empty Rudolfinium is problematic. In addition to the effects described above, the centre channel of the 5.0 surround mix is virtually inaudible, and what little one can hear from it bears no relation to sounds one might expect to come from the centre of the orchestra.
Unfortunately this SACD can only be recommended to Strauss completists.
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Copyright © 2007 Graham Williams and SA-CD.net
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