Eötvös Conducts Stravinsky

Album review

Romanian conductor and composer Peter Eötvös is known for his proficiency in Stravinsky's "primitivist" works; his Hungaraton recording of both 1917 and 1923 versions of Les Noces is viewed in some quarters as a watershed album in Stravinsky studies; university classes have been based around it and the insight the album provides into Stravinsky's working methods. That was made in 1988; since then Eötvös has not had much opportunity to return to Stravinsky, working closely instead with Pierre Boulez, the Ensemble Modern, and promoting his own compositions. The Budapest Music Center's Eötvös Conducts Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps, Mavra affords Peter Eötvös the chance to follow up his earlier achievement. In this instance he devises yet another novel pairing, apparently never before tried on disc, combining the first and most famous of Stravinsky's primitivist works, the ballet Le sacre du Printemps, with one of the last and most obscure works, the one-act comic opera Mavra (1922), which is almost never recorded and seldom performed. Le sacre du Printemps, made with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, is decent but a little sluggish and underpowered; that may be because this is, after all, a youth orchestra trying to get a grip on a big and difficult work. It is to some extent excusable, but BMC's editing of the tracks is another matter -- certain track changes within the ballet occur a little after a given section has begun -- sloppy! As the shorter work, Mavra is presented all on one track. This is not an issue, but the choice of singers certainly is; while these are buffo characterizations and the sound of trained Russian singers attempting to sing traditionally styled writing can be a little alien, slack singing is another matter and there is plenty of it here. Only mezzo-soprano Lilli Paasikivi, who has the relatively minor role of the neighbor, seems to be on her game -- if only she could have traded places with the soprano who sings Parasha. Tenor Valeri Serkin has some torturous writing to contend with in the part of Vasili, and torture is indeed the result; he's all over the place and it's a terrible thing to endure. It is a pity that Eötvös couldn't have engaged singers for this recording that are in keeping with the fine orchestral complement that he manages with the Göteborgs Symfoniker -- the orchestra is light on its feet, follow Stravinsky's more or less constant rhythm throughout and in general sound just right in the music, if you can tune out the singers. Obviously, that's not a desirable situation at all to have to "tune out the singers" in an opera, and as fine as Eötvös' turn with Les Noces was for Hungaraton, this BMC disc is obviously a miss.
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