This release gives us all that we’re missing

This release gives us all that we’re missing

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norman lebrecht

January 23, 2021

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

…. These live recordings from the Barbican demonstrate Noseda’s tendency to go for a tight close-up when an individual player or section shines bright, and for a wider view when Shostakovich lapses into one of his mumbling equivocations and melancholic slumps. The 10th symphony loses a notch or two of tension in the finale and the recorded sound is constipated by the Barbican’s acoustic shortcomings. But the release gives us what we most crave right now — an experience, or at least a simulacrum — of live orchestral music in all its colours and frailties. You won’t be disappointed.

Read on here.

And here.

In The Critic.

En francais.

In Spanish.

In Czech.

More languages follow.

 

Comments

  • RW2013 says:

    Whatever.
    I always come back to this
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCkR7K6mIuE

  • Greg Bottini says:

    “THIS RELEASE GIVES US ALL THAT WE’RE MISSING”????
    Hardly.
    These performances are rather flaccid, in terrible sound, and are completely unmemorable.
    For Shostakovich 10: Mitropoulos, Mravinsky, or Karajan.
    And my votes for the 9th go to the old Efrem Kurtz / NY Phil recording and Barshai / WDR Sinfonieorchester.
    THAT’S what we’re missing.

  • Jack says:

    Noseda’s behind the camera while he’s conducting too? Quite a feat!

  • Evan Tucker says:

    I’m pretty sure they’ll offer Noseda anyway, and he very well may say yes and wiggle out of other commitments.

  • Foster Beyers says:

    Your review states that Noseda is at the Zurich Opera but isn’t that Fabio Luisi?

  • Anon9 says:

    Imagine a fantasy world where music can only be live; recording is not possible; all existing recordings in any medium become instantly unusable. As an act of grace a live performance can be broadcast, but only as it is happening. Of course some oldsters would still remember hearing a concert in their youth when Karajan or Kleiber or Ormandy or some other great man, now long dead, did everything (as far as they recall) so much better. But surely we would be far more grateful for the Rattles, Nosedas, Neget-Szeguns, van Zwedens and Grazinyte-Tylas of today, and the musicians they conduct. Gratitude is a positive, life-enhancing emotion, and one worth cultivating.

    • Greg Bottini says:

      Yes “Anon9”, blah blah blah.
      But it is NOT a “fantasy world”, and we DO have recordings, and the Karajans or Kleibers or Ormandys of the past CAN be compared to the Rattles, Nosedas, Neget-Szeguns, van Zwedens and Grazinyte-Tylas of today.
      The latter are found wanting in every way compared to the giants of the past.
      And you speak of “gratitude”? Well, I am VERY grateful for those recordings of the past – they demonstrate the possibilities of *truly* great, inspired, and inspiring music-making, as opposed to the mere competence that you seem so happy to embrace.
      The Rattles, Nosedas, Neget-Szeguns, van Zwedens and Grazinyte-Tylas of today are the assistant conductors of yesterday.

      • Anon9 says:

        Let’s review the situation in 2071!

      • Anon9 says:

        Two niggling thoughts:
        1. The performances you (rightly) admire were from orchestras predominantly or entirely male and white European (or European-American), conducted by men of the same background in the god-conductor tradition. Has today’s diversity and greater orchestral democracy reduced the quality of the music-making?
        2. Since there is now a treasure-house on vinyl and in digital form of many great, perhaps unsurpassable, performances of the standard classical music repertoire, what is the point in continuing with live performances, which can only be inferior, of that repertoire?

      • Anon9 says:

        I meant only to say that attending a live concert (even with merely competent musicians) is an experience quite different in quality from listening at home to recorded music. However great the giants of the past are (for whom of course we are eternally grateful), this is something they cannot now give us.

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