. . . but D.H. only rated it a 7/10. I'm going to get for all of the positive reasons that he cites. I can live with Eschenbach's weird tempi and phrasing - I think. Here goes:
SAMUEL BARBER
Toccata Festiva
FRANCIS POULENC
Concerto for Organ, Strings, & Timpani
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
Symphony No. 3 "Organ"
Olivier Latry (organ)
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Christoph Eschenbach
Ondine- ODE 1094-5(CD)
Reference Recording - Saint-Saens: Munch (RCA)
This disc has a lot going for it. The new organ in Philadelphia's Orchestra Hall, the inaugural concert of which is enshrined on this disc, is clearly a splendid instrument. I do wish the notes had omitted the business about "the world's largest" in a concert hall. Quality always should come before quantity. Alas, part of classical music machismo involves standing around and comparing the size of one's organ. Never mind: the Fred J. Cooper Memorial you-know-what is clearly impressive, and it's magnificently recorded here. The instrument has power to spare but not a hint of steeliness or harshness in fortissimo, and it harbors a huge range of colors in its zillions of pipes.
Barber wrote his Toccata Festiva for this orchestra, on the occasion of the installation of its previous organ in the old Academy of Music. It's wonderful music, brilliant and exciting but never vulgar or bombastic, sustained by the composer's trademark lyricism. Given that this is an "original cast recording", well, one generation removed, you might expect the performance to be a knockout, and it is. The engineering throughout this program is remarkable not just for its presence and amplitude, but also for the ideal balances between orchestra and organ, and for the clarity with which bass registers (organ pedals, timpani, bass drum, lower strings) are differentiated from one another. It's a genuine feast for the ears in that regard alone.
Poulenc's Organ Concerto also receives a thrilling and unremittingly intense reading, with some particularly outstanding string playing from the legendary Philadelphia players. Here, however, a problem begins to creep in that can be summed up in one word: Eschenbach. He always has had a tendency to mannerism, to self-indulgent slowness and affected phrasing. There are a few moments in the quieter sections of the concerto, beautiful as they are, where the music needs to press forward more purposefully. It's not a big issue, particularly when the strings and organist Olivier Latry realize Poulenc's instructions so well (such as the "intense" at figure 33), but it becomes an issue of considerable concern in the performance of the Organ Symphony.
In this latter work, Eschenbach's interpretation is just plain weird. Don't get me wrong: I like risk-taking, but a composer like Saint-Saëns demands that Romantic abandon be balanced with a measure of Classical restraint. The Poco adagio second movement, played "molto adagio", is the slowest ever. This may be the only recording in which it lasts substantially longer than the first movement, which is splendidly articulated in this performance but also moderately paced. The actual tempo wouldn't matter so much if Eschenbach didn't pause to massage every phrase along the way--and quite frankly the result is tasteless. Obviously the music should sound sweet, but what we have here is the musical equivalent of a diabetic coma.
As if to compensate, Eschenbach rushes the scherzo mercilessly. The orchestra takes it all in stride, and good for them--but the music comes off as grim and almost totally lacking in charm. In the trio section I do wish the cymbal player had used a hard stick. He's part of the rhythm section here, and at Eschenbach's tempo the melodic profile is blurry enough. For the most part the finale proceeds slowly and heavily until the coda, when Eschenbach indulges in an accelerando to something like twice the indicated speed, and then blasts through the final pages like a bat out of hell. Again, the impression is vulgar rather than exciting, and while I have no doubt that the performance must have been impressive heard live, this simply isn't a view of the work that needed to be preserved on disc.
So this is a mixed bag. Like most documents of "occasions", you have to take the good with the bad. I need to stress that as usual the orchestra plays fabulously, and both the Barber and Poulenc are pretty terrific. But by the same token the main item is the symphony, and Eschenbach is simply out of his element here. We live in difficult times when it comes to conductors. Between the mindlessly pedantic "authenticists" and the narcissistic micro-managers, good, solid generalists with the ability to give freshly idiomatic performances of a wide-ranging repertoire seem ever more difficult to find. This program promises much but only partially delivers, and the fault lies squarely with the guy on the podium.
Topic: I'm getting this anyway, but...(Saint-Saens,Sym 3 "Organ",Eschenbach/PhillyO) (Read 8029 times)