Tchaikovsky: Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty & Swan Lake (Schätze der Klassik)

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Reissues can be great bargains for the budget conscious and the beginning collector, but sometimes they are dubious enough in quality to be skipped, despite their affordability. A case in point is this 2006 package from Berlin Classics, which features suites from Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky's three great ballets (The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, and Swan Lake) originally recorded in 1982 by Heinz Rögner and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. The suites appear more or less as one expects: except for the omission of the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy," and ignoring the reversal in the package's track listing of the "Arabian Dance" and the "Trepak," the suite from The Nutcracker follows the familiar order set by the composer; the other two suites, usually somewhat varied in content, offer representative excerpts. However, the interpretations of these selections are not exceptional, and the execution is lacking in many places. Rögner and his orchestra are earnest in their attempts, but there are some imprecise cut-offs and random problems of intonation and variable tone quality that pop up throughout this album, frequently enough to make the performances seem less than stellar. Beyond this, there is a lack of enthusiasm that comes through in the slack tempos and average orchestral sound quality, which suffers from the early digital recording. Little is gained, then, in buying this humdrum compilation, especially since the complete ballets can be found at reasonable prices, and there is no need to settle for short suites in the age of the CD. So even though this looks like a reasonable collection, and perhaps worth a hearing, you can do much better with a little shopping around for the full works.

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