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Site review by Geohominid June 12, 2010
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Performance: Sonics (S/MC): / |
This live concert recording, dating from 9-11th May 2008, features the excellent Pittsburgh Orchestra with its then new Music Director, Manfred Honeck. It has apparently been available in the US for some time, but only recently arrived in Europe. Potential buyers should be aware that applause appears at the end of each track.
Usually one can sit and concentrate on the music from an SACD, but with Exton I have found a wide variation in the style/quality of their eingineering. This sound from this disc, over many hearings, has been extraordinarily distracting in my efforts to get to the disc's musical heart. Virtually every time I listened to it, the recording seemed to have different characteristics, much of this variability related to the precise listening volume. At my normal listening level, my first impression was that the multichannel track sounded like a mono recording of an orchestra towards the back of a vast, foggy hall - despite the rear and centre channels carrying a barely audible signal (generalised sounds of an orchestra heard from the end of a very long tunnel), which is often the Exton house style. The surround channels add nothing of significance to the listening experience.
Advancing the volume gradually brought the instruments forward through the foggy ambience, with the sound stage widening somewhat but never with convincing perspective or stability, and the sound seemed to lack warmth in the mid and lower mid-range. At more realistic volumes, greater warmth appears (i.e. one can hear the violas and upper cellos better), but the basses are woolly and often boom. Other reviewers (elsewhere) of this issue have also commented on its problematic sonics - including one who even found the recording far too dry! The applause also sounds somehow artificial, with all clapping coming close-up from the front, and odd claps leaping out of context - very unsettling! Eventually I settled on the Stereo track, which had better balance and somewhat more consistent sound, although some likely patch edits suddenly seemed to send the strings back into a much more ambient space - possibly Heinz Hall without the audience.
Honeck opens with Verdi's Overture (Sinfonia) to 'La Forza del Destino', one of the few Verdi operas with an overture rather than a short prelude. It was put together rather hastily to replace the original prelude after the first performance, and rather shows this in its string of contrasting episodes. Notably, it begins with two sets of three loud warning notes from trombones and cimbasso (a hybrid between bass trombone tuba and invented by Verdi). Probably tubas were used on this occasion, as often with modern orchestras.
Honeck appears to be making the overture an opening crowd-pleaser, and takes it very fast, thus reducing the menacing call of Verdi's signals to peremptory trombone blasts (these warning signals appear elsewhere in the overture). One reviewer (from another site) mistakenly congratulated Honeck on following Verdi's alleged 'Presto' instruction for the overture. This is incorrect; the tempo for the first bars is merely Allegro, and the brass chords are minims. The restless violin theme which immediately follows is marked 'Allegro agitato presto', where the presto is not a tempo indication but an encouragement to articulate crisply. Listen to Karajan (RBCD) for a much more baleful opening, and far more tension and drive from Verdi's nervy hairpin crescendos in the main string theme. Honeck's hasty start leads to drastic gear-changes at the many slower, lyrical episodes. Karajan and the BPO provide a much better integrated view of the overture by not rushing it so. However, Honeck does achieve his goal and is rewarded by a very enthusiastic outburst of audience applause.
Composer Alan Fletcher (President and CEO of the Aspen School and Music Festival) received a commission from the Pittsburgh Orchestra, specifically for a work for their principal clarinettist, Martin Rusinek. Asked by Fletcher what he had in mind, Rusinek replied "the concerto that Barber never wrote for the clarinet". It would require a very brave and self-effacing composer indeed to attempt such a work, and the resulting première of Fletcher's new three-movement concerto is recorded on this disc.
Although Fletcher does not have anything like Barber's melodic gift, this is an interesting piece which does bear repeated hearings, although I found it often lacked contrast and dramatic fire. Despite some opening pungent harmonies, it is mainly tonal and lyrical, indeed pastoral in a Vaughan-Williams sort of vein in its slow movement. The finale I found rather disappointing, starting in a rather slow version of 'Presto' (this time) with a series of rising scales being exchanged between soloist and orchestra. It quickly looses momentum and thus sparkle, however. Still, I'm sure that clarinettists will welcome the new concerto; they are not exactly common in the repertoire. Rusinek's fine account was somewhat disturbed by changes in recording perspective; at times it was difficult to distinguish between the soloist and the orchestral clarinettist. The oddly muffled applause was polite rather than enthusiastic.
Honeck shows signs of being a Strauss interpreter of considerable talent. Unfortunately the orchestra was earthbound for the crucial first few bars of Heldenleben's infamous opening, a real trap for players. However, gravity was eventually overcome and the Hero's theme finally took wing impressively. Strauss' critics were well characterised, variously acerbic or grumpy, their wind polyphony knitted nicely, and concertmaster Andrés Cárdenes' solo violin had sweetness, sentimentality (as indicated by the composer) and fantasy. At times the opaque and flat sound-stage got in the way, particularly in the big climaxes, which were (at a good listening level) overbearing and verging on distortion. A dead-sounding bass drum with a mike too close did not help. Honeck made the affectionate quotations from Don Quixote, Till Eulenspiel, Don Juan and many other sources very clear in "The Hero's Works of Peace". In the final section, Strauss' picture of retirement was taken very slowly, almost a minute slower than Luisi or Janssons, but this was done with great feeling and superb control from the orchestra. Alas, the final swelling chord as recorded has some kind of low-frequency distortion-like crunching when the bass drum enters and conflicts with the tubas.
This concert has numerous musical attractions, but I tired of trying to hear these through Exton's synthetic sonics, and would only recommend purchase of this rather expensive disc if the programme is a must-have. What a relief to turn to Luisi (Richard Strauss: Ein Heldenleben, Metamorphosen - Luisi) and Janssons (Richard Strauss: Ein Heldenleben - Jansons) for easy-to-listen-to, truly transparent sound with wide, deep and stable orchestral imaging in Heldenleben. As a by-note, I compared Pentatone's recording of the Pittsburghers playing Brahms 4 in an empty Heinz Hall with Exton's live recording efforts. Although the hall's acoustic here was rendered (paradoxically) almost on the dry side by the Pentatone engineers, the breathtaking immediacy and realism of their sound-stage seemed to go well beyond the speakers and the orchestra's greater warmth was far more appealing to my ears.
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Copyright © 2010 John Miller and SA-CD.net
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Review by hiredfox November 26, 2009 (6 of 6 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics (S): |
Let me say from outset that this is one of the most musically satisfying discs that I have bought in along time and the surely amongst the finest Exton recordings yet. It is unusual for Exton in two ways, firstly because the booklet carries extensive notes in English written by an English speaker, so not victim of the usual dodgy translations. Secondly the disc presents a complete concert programme recorded live, providing valuable insight into Manfred Honeck's ideas on programming. A bonus is genuine real time applause after each component.
The disc is characterised by sumptuous playing from The Pittsburgh Symphony, refined in detail, extraordinarily sensitive to the varying dynamics of this ever popular tone poem and essentially free of errors. A first class orchestra on top of it's game for sure. The DSD recording borders on perfection, beautifully balanced, articulated in the finest detail across a broad sound-stage and recreating an unexaggerated, totally convincing acoustic of Heinz Hall. Naturally, there are points of detail that could have been improved (if one wishes to nitpick) - as always in live recordings - most noticeably the far-too distant flugelhorns bordering on inaudibility at the conclusion of Des Helden Gefahren but nothing can be perfect.
This is the fourth or fifth version of Ein Heldenleben on SACD in my collection and by far the most deeply satisfying, a clear first choice for me. Of the other two pieces on this concert disc, the warm-up is the ever (over?)-popular Overture from Verdi's opera "La Forza del Destino" played with light-hearted panache, the concerto a World premier recording of "Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra" by the New Jersey composer Alan Fletcher ( a new name for me). Mr Fletcher was commissioned by the Pittsburgh Orchestra to compose a clarinet concerto for Michael Rusinek in the style of Samuel Barber, "the clarinet concerto that Samuel Barber never wrote.
It is an engaging piece in three movements worthy of a hearing. Having said that it is based on ideas about the "long line and tonal procedures reminiscent of Barber" and to an extent because of that it may strike some as too unoriginal. Filling 'a gap' with a facsimile may not qualify the piece for acceptance in the main repertory but it is an enjoyable 'listen'; other listener's must make up their own minds. I will listen to it again simply because it would not make great sense to play only parts of a disc that the producers had gone to great lengths to present as a whole.
Thoroughly enjoyable and thoroughly recommended.
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