Gala Concert—300 Years of St. Petersburg

Gala Concert—300 Years of St. Petersburg. Stars Anna Netrebko (soprano), Dimitri Hvorostovsky (baritone), Mischa Maisky (cello), Elisso Virsaladze (piano), and Viktor Tretyakov (violin). Yuri Temirkanov and Nikolai Alekseev direct the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Works performed are:

• Shostakovich: Festive Overture

• Saint-Saëns: Introduction & Rondo capriccioso

• Ravel: Concerto for the Left Hand for Piano and Orchestra

• Tschaikovsky: "Polonaise" from Eugene Onegin

• Donizetti: "Regnava nel silenzio" from Lucia di Lammermoor

• Puccini: "Quando men vo" from La Bohème

• Tschaikovsky: "Vy tak pechalny . . .Ya vas lyublyu" from Pique Dame

• Verdi: "O Carlo, ascolta" from Don Carlo

• Respighi: "Adagio con variazioni"

• Bruch: "Kol Nidrei"

• Leoncavallo: "Nedda!" - "Silvio! A quest' ora" from Pagliacci

• Rachmaninov: "Fanfare"

Directed for TV by Michael Beyer. Released 2009, disc has 5.1 PCM sound. Grade: C

Although this concert (previously issued as a DVD) was shot in HD in a brightly illuminated hall, the picture seems soft and slightly washed out or hazy. At one point some SD material got into the mix. The sound quality seems to be a throwback to DVD days. For example, at the beginning of the Ravel Concerto for the Left Hand, there is a video shot of the basses playing softly. But on my system, I don't hear the big violins at all. Later, there are close-ups of the snare drum in action, but the drum sounds like it is being played outside the building.

The front art on the jewel box is pitifully amateurish. I'm no expert on printing, but I think the front cover art was supposed to be printed with the 3 color system using cyan, magenta, yellow, (and black).  I think the front cover has the magenta for sure but is missing the black (and maybe other information).  The splash screen on the disc is also crude.

A mediocre engineering job could be overlooked if the music on the disc were great. But, alas, I couldn't get excited about the content either. This was not a gala entertaining art patrons (where champagne music is all you want). This event (there were at least two performances) was to honor the people of St. Petersburg, and the people of St. Petersburg were there. These are people who in our times have suffered two world wars, a siege that cost a million lives, the greatest political terror in history, and a lost century. And what did the citizens of the Hero City—this city of sacrifice—get to assuage their pain? A festive overture, a fanfare, a one-hand piano concerto, Musetta's Waltz, and a duet from The Clowns. Those were the worst offenders. Anna Netrebko was still thin and unbelievable pretty in 2003. But she was dressed for the wrong kind of gala with a cocktail gown cut to the waist. Maybe this is what was bothering her as she struggled through her assignment.

Finally, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, strong and serene, stepped in to briefly turn the tide. His Yeletsky's aria (Pique Dame) and Death of Rodrigo (Don Carlo) were to me the only numbers on the program worthy of the people in attendance. Mischa Maisky came in first runner up with his heartfelt, warm cello renditions, but the effect was blunted for me by the gaudy jewelry he insists on wearing. This record was well-received in its DVD version. But in HDVD you can see and hear what's really going on: this event was a missed opportunity.

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Schumann Piano Concerto & Schumann Symphony No. 4

Schumann Piano Concerto and Symphony No. 4 concert. In 2006 Riccardo Chailly conducts the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig with Martha Argerich as piano soloist. In addition, disc has 6 short pieces by Schumann:

• "Adagio & Allegro brillante" arranged by Tchaikovsky, from Études symphoniques

• "Von fremden Ländern und Menschen" from Kinderszenen (Argerich)

• "Préambule" from Carnaval

• "Valse allemande" from Carnaval

• "Intermezzo: Paganini" from Carnaval

• "Marche des Davidsbündler contre les Philistins" from Carnaval

Directed for TV by Michael Beyer. Released in 2010, disc has 5.1 PCM sound. Grade: NA

Chailly, gleefuly enthusiastic and expressive with his rubber face, could probably conduct with his hands tied behind him. Under his leadership, the Gewandhausorchester in 2010 was rated 17th in the world by Gramophone magazine. This is a very nice all-Schumann disc. It would be hard to imagine a better performance of the 4th Symphony than the one presented here. Chailly has a special relationship with Argerich, the chain-smoking kaffeine-krazy keyboard kamikaze of my youth who is now a plump Granny wearing an Hawaiian shirt skirt. Her performance was a little eccentric compared to my old Radu Lupu LP recording of the concerto. But she still has the knack for making the piano croon. This was especially noticeable when I compared her version of the concerto with the patrician-level rendition of this from Murray Perahia and the Royal Concertgebouw, also available in HDVD. When I hear Perahia play the concerto, I think of viewing old-master paintings in a beautiful museum in the capital of a nation. When I hear Argerich, I think of hiding in the shadows next to a moonlit meadow and stealing kisses before curfew. Which would you rather be doing right now?

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Homage to Robert Schumann

Homage to Robert Schumann concert. Daniel Harding conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden with the MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig (Chorus Master Howard Arman). Features baritone Markus Butter and the following boy soloists of the Dresden Kreuzchor: sopranos Ole Kottner and Franz Lindner as well as altos Sebastian Dominik Pfeifer and Vincent Hoppe. The concert was performed in the Frauenkirche Dresden in 2010 as part of celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Robert Schumann. The  program is:

• Schumann Overture to the opera Genoveva

• Schumann Scherzo in G minor from the Symphony Fragment in C minor

• Schumann “Abendmusik” in B flat minor

• Friedrich Hebbel "Nachlied" for Choir and Orchestra

• Schumann Requiem für Mignon for Choir, Solo Voices, and Orchestra

• Schumann Symphony No. 3 "Rhenish"

Directed for TV by Ute Feudel. Sung in German. Released 2010, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound.   Grade: D

The Frauenkirche is a huge, high cylinder topped by a dome. There is a cutaway on the "back" for the alter, choir, and organ. The interior is stone and plaster decorated in "modern baroque" style. Many spotlights brightly illuminate the alter and the floor in front of the altar where a temporary stage was installed. It's a startlingly beautiful scene. But there must be a lot of reverberation in that space. Getting recording mikes in place must have been a problem. And that problem was maybe not completely solved, because it sounds to me as if the winds in the orchestra tend to drown out the strings and the singers.

The program is short and odd because each piece is supposed to have some connection to the time Schumann spent in Dresden. The program begins with the Overture to Schumann's rarely-performed opera Genoveva. It just so happens that we have a Blu-ray recording of the Genoveva opera from Opernhaus Zürich. I listened to both versions of the Overture and found that the performance by the Staatskapelle Dresden was just as good as that from Zürich.

Next on the program are two fragments left behind by Schumann that have been rescued by Joachim Draheim. Except for their connection to Dresden, these fragments would be of no interest to any one other than a Schumann specialist. Then comes an 11-minute piece setting a poem by Friedrich Hebbel to music of the orchestra and the chorus. The MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig is a highly respected organization. But this performance suggests to me that the signers in this recording were possibly semi-professional. The last of the short pieces is a setting of Goethe's poem "Requiem für Mignon" for orchestra, choir, and solo voices, including 4 boys. Here again the chorus didn't sound good to me. And including boys in a program that can be recorded only once is a high-risk proposition!

After the warmup above, the orchestra moves on to the "Rhenish." I didn't like this performance on first hearing. I then compared the Dresden take to a nice LP recording of the "Rhenish" I have by the Cleveland Orchestra. After several comparisons, my opinion of the Dresden recording improved. But I finally concluded that a weakness of the strings reduces the singing line and coherence of the Dresden performance. Maybe the folks in the audience heard something different.

So what grade should I give to this Homage? Well, if you live in Saxony, you might want this disc for patriotic reasons. But how about the rest of us? 4 of the 5 warm up pieces probably are not worth paying for. If you have the Genoveva opera, you don't need another version of the overture from this disc. So that leaves us a mediocre recording of the "Rhenish," a symphony that is about 27 minutes long. I question whether you should buy this unless you have a special good reason, so I give it a D. I believe the Dresden folks who attended this event had an experience better than my D would indicate. But I question whether this recording will add enough to your collection to be worth the purchase price.

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