# Blind comparison: Isle of the Dead



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Yet another in my occasional blind comparison series, this time Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead (ok, a few days late!)

For those of you unfamiliar with these comparison threads, I am providing links to 4 different performances of the work but without any indication as to who, what, when, where and why! The idea is for you to listen to them and offer your opinions without having preconceived biases about the performers. The audio quality may vary especially if one is a live performance but I encourage you to filter that out and concentrate on the actual performance.

One common outcome is that some of the participants will find that their opinions are different from what they would have expected, and that can be a good thing. _But please do not feel intimidated, there are no correct answers, just listen, enjoy and say what appeals to you._ Don't feel that you have to write some lengthy critique, but do so if you want. I have also added a poll to this thread so that those who don't feel like posting can anonymously show their preference.

The idea here is not to guess who did them, although go ahead if you want to do so, however if you do recognize the performance, please don't spoil it for others by posting the names (you can PM me if you wish.) All I will say is that none of them are any of the well-known recordings, I intentionally avoid them as too many people will immediately recognize them.

Depending on how many participate (and please let us know if you intend to), I will post the details by the end of the weekend. You can also PM me if you want to know the details before I post them.

A - isle-a.mp3 - Shared with pCloud
B - isle-b.mp3 - Shared with pCloud
C - isle-c.mp3 - Shared with pCloud
D - isle-d.mp3 - Shared with pCloud

Enjoy


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## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

Thanks Becca. I'm in. Give me a weekend to go throguh them.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Hopefully I'll get a chance to listen this weekend (my weekends have been silly busy recently)


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I'll give it a go.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I hope that others will also participate. I know that some are intimidated to post in case they 'get it wrong' - there is no such thing, have a go.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Just on a first hearing D is my favourite and C my least favourite. Will try and report back tomorrow so I'll leave my vote until a 2nd listen. I know recording B is live but they must be the noisiest audience I've ever heard. I'm surprised they all didn't start eating poppadoms, crisps and prawn crackers en masse. They did everything else humanly possible to ruin the performance 😠


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## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

Quick impression -

The most noticeable thing is the strange recording of A, where the recording level drops to a murmur in the middle part. D came across as the most atmospheric on first listen, but after going through all four once, I became less enthusiastic about it. In fact I can’t think of a more appropriate word than “Hollywood” to describe it (this is not a compliment).

I’ll go through a second round. More to follow.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Interesting reactions.!

Anyone else?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

On a first listen (well, I've gone back and listened to parts of them to verify my first impressions) I don't like any of them very much but dislike D less than the others.

Among the things I dislike about the lot of them is that they all take the contrasting section in E-flat too fast. This becomes apparent when its theme is reprised in the coda (_Più mosso_, 12 before reh 23 in the Breitkopf reprint of the Guthiel edition), where it is taken by all of them at a much slower tempo, like it should have been at its initial statement (at the key change, 15 before reh 14). Why should it be slower? Because it's the one life affirming idea in the whole work and it should be lingered over as anyone looking back at a happy memory would on the way out of this world. Which brings me to the second general complaint about all of the performances:

All of the conductors are afraid to lilt and sigh, to sound too romantic. They are trying to rush through the melodic sequences in the E-flat theme as if they are compensating for a defect (too much sequential writing), when they should be embracing and milking those sequences, for better or worse, because it's the only approach that works. Sticks up the ar$e, one and all.

Specific comments about each performance:

A. This one is out of the running because of the cut taken in the _Un poco più vivo_ section (reh 9). Inexcusable. Then there is the inconsistent and occasionally perverse phrasing, as when one critical iteration of the main "Dies Irae motive" (one of the brass chorale statements) is oddly fragmented. Also poor attention to detail and some messy entrances.

B. A poorly mixed live performance. The way too fast tempo of the E-flat theme is emphasized by the fact that the tempo of the following section is actually slower. A$$ backwards. This conductor has an intermittently good dramatic sense.

C. The strict metronomic pulse in the coda was annoying. Otherwise the same defects as the above, which include one I didn't mention yet: The triplet descending chromatically at the end of the final climax (brass _ff_, 8 after 22) needs to be slower than the preceding tempo to prepare for the _lunga_ pause before the following Largo. This is important because this descent is echoed (pizzicato cellos and 1st violins) in the eerie _Largo_ section that follows and the connection is lost if the tempi are too different.

D. This is the only performance engineered worth a damn. It's striking too for its general approach to 5/8 meter. In case one hasn't noticed this, quintuple meter in this work is almost universally treated with a slight lilt, as in performances of waltzes but less pronounced, where the final of the two rhythmic groups is extended in every measure. This performance plays it completely straight or perhaps even has a bit of an anti-lilt at times, slightly pushing the last part of the measure instead of dragging it. This makes the performance rhythmically edgy and tense, which works surprisingly well.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Thanks for that, a really nice critique!


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## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

Both A & C come across as the more characterful.

A starts with a nice tempo but slows down quite shockingly. (In fact, all four performances are too slow for me.) The build up of intensity and release of energy is good. Woodwinds and brass also seem to rise above the pedaling heavy texture a bit more than the others which is also good. Well, until the recording turns funny towards the first climax with an unbelievable drop in loudness level. A thunderous climax is coming but it drops off the cliff in no time. I am pretty sure it is the recording, not the performance, that is the culprit. The strings’ “aria” that follows also could have been hysterical if not for the terrible recording. What a pity. The recording level does return to normal towards the end. 

The dull sonics of C together with a soft recording level demands turning up the volume knob. After doing that, what stands out for me is the orchestra’s slightly different sonority, which gives it a stronger feel of fantasy. Also about 3/4 into the music after that 6 notes of thwacks, the relentlessly repeating Dies irae motif also stands out like a magic spell. On the other hand, the uniformity in the presentation of the main motif whenever it appears perhaps unintentionally (?) gives it a sense of stubbornness, which is certainly characterful.

More to follow.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Addendum: The crowd in B sounds like they live somewhere cold where everyone smokes and drinks too much.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Quick comments. Sorry. I'm well busy tonight

A. Lousy recording with weird levels. Played OK but I can't get past the recording levels. No.

B. Noisiest live performance ever at the emphysema and chain-smoker convention with a crowd who can't even sit still. Dramatic but the mix is not good at all. No.

C. Too many things that annoyed me especially it being too slow and the recording too quiet. It's not a bad performance but it's not that great either. Scandinavian orchestra?

D. Still definitely my favourite here. Sounds like it's a safe pair of hands at the helm and it's played right down the line but effectively. The best recorded sound amongst the 4 by some margin, this is a decent version and a decent orchestra (nice brass) 

Tbh none of these would be in my preferred choices. If I get some more listening time I'll add some more comments.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

I'm following this with interest because I like the piece. But I've only heard a couple different performances, never studied the score, and so I don't have much of critical framework to base a substantive opinion on.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Knorf said:


> I'm following this with interest because I like the piece. But I've only heard a couple different performances, never studied the score, and so I don't have much of critical framework to base a substantive opinion on.


Ohh give it a go


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## Malx (Jun 18, 2017)

I'll give them a listen but it will have to be tomorrow for me - I've avoided the comments from others above to listen with unprejudiced ears.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Malx said:


> I'll give them a listen but it will have to be tomorrow for me - I've avoided the comments from others above to listen with unprejudiced ears.


Great, I look forward to your opinions.


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

'Blind' Isle of the Dead?

Hhmmm ...

I'd rather listen to *Tombs of the Blind Dead* by Antón García Abril.


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## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

B has got some long lines, occasional perpetual flows and the building of tension is mostly natural. There is no quick thrill but refined intensity more like a 16-year Lagavulin than a can of Red Bull. The caveat is, on another day, I might call it boring. Otherwise the first half is adequately intense and the second adequately hysterical.

In fact, D was the first one I listened to. During the first listen, some of the words that I've written down are: atmospheric, grab you by the throat, vacillating, dramatic, purposeful moulding of the notes, fussily entertaining. Not bad, it seems. However, after listening to the other three, I added the word "Hollywood". I feel that, while it is a good performance with good effects and is certainly entertaining, the other three, despite their flaws, are more memorable as far as performance is concerned.

At the end of the day, I dislike B a little bit less than A (awful recording) and C (sightseeing tour). As for D, I like it least, although it would probably make the safest general recommendation among these four considering not only performance but also recording and background noise (unless you can't stand the conductor's grunting in D). But then, all four are too slow for me, therefore sorry I can't convince myself to vote for any of them.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Sightseeing tour. Lol. Kiki's thinking "can we send these 4 recordings to the Isle of the Dead"? 😄 Tbh, none are bad just not my preference. I've warmed a little bit to A. I'm not sure if this is an older recording or a poorly recorded newer one. The oboe is good and the conductor builds tension fairly well. I still don't mind D at all. D is a big, class orchestra caught live in a large hall. Listen to the depth of string sound. That's either the Concertgebouw or (more likely) the BPO. Like Kiki says it's not strongly characterised but it's a decent run-through and I'd be happy to hear that live (but certainly not blown away). I've actually warmed a bit to recording B too. It's still ruined by that horrendous audience (I'd have stopped and told them to sit still and stfu) but it's got some real good drama to it. As for C, I just find it quite boring. It's seems to drag and feels laboured. The sound doesn't help one bit.
To pick up on something Edward mentioned, the only recording that gets the opening rhythm right, for me, with that odd lilt (I dont use much technical vocab as I'm musically fairly illiterate) is D. Although it's still a bit on the slower side it builds a nice edge. I have an older recording at home that nails that part and is quicker.  I'll have no more time to listen today so that's all I can say. So I'll go with D but none of these are recordings I'd particularly bother much with again.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

I listened to the first 3 minutes of each. The first two, in comparison to each other, had a faint hint of what I think of as my Unfinished symphony experience.....I picked up Bohm and Karajan relatively close to each other long ago, and was so struck by the different approach to the opening. (I've always been afraid to go back and hear whether or not this point is as true as I thought it was  ) Bohm seemed to emphasize the marching with the melody striking me as a descant above. Karajan seemed to treat the lower figure as a sort of ostinato underneath the main event, the melody in the empyrion! I got a touch of that here. Number 3 was too slow without a compensatory definition to it to make it feel like an event. Onstage, if you go slow you'd better provide a reason for it or it's beddy-bye time! Number 4 showed signs of being an early "most appealing'......it seemed long-lined lyrical and blossomed into something feeling more dramatic, in a lyrical way, than the others.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

As there doesn't seem to be others who intend to participate, perhaps it's time to post the details. If you don't want to know at this time then exit now, otherwise in the next post...


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Thanks to all who participated  

A - Russian National Orchestra / Mikhail Pletnev (live in Paris)
B - Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Vladimir Jurowski
C - hr-sinfonieorchester (Frankfurt) / Edward Gardner
D - Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Lan Shui (live concert in Berlin Philharmonie)


A & C were chosen partly because they were the fastest and slowest that I could find (other than Svetlanov)
I originally intended to include the New York Philharmonic/Kurt Masur as the 4th but then decided to use Singapore instead thinking that it would be interesting to include an orchestra from that part of the world.

P.S. Interesting that Merl mentioned the Berlin Phil. for D - must be to do with the hall acoustics.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Interesting!

After adding back the 20 odd seconds cut from the work in the Pletnev/RNO performance, would it still have been the fastest?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> Interesting!
> 
> After adding back the 20 odd seconds cut from the work in the Pletnev/RNO performance, would it still have been the fastest?


Yes by about 1 minute. Interestingly I came across this a few days ago...
_The reason Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 1929 recording runs about 2 min less than the average recording of today is not due to a particularly fast reading. It is because he had cut about 13% of the original music, 62 out of 478 bars!
And apparently he confirmed these revisions again shortly before his death for “everyone” to adhere to. See this article from the Philadelphia Orchestra website, even showing a photograph of the first page of the score with SR’s hand-written note._


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Becca said:


> Yes by about 1 minute. Interestingly I came across this a few days ago...
> _The reason Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 1929 recording runs about 2 min less than the average recording of today is not due to a particularly fast reading. It is because he had cut about 13% of the original music, 62 out of 478 bars!
> And apparently he confirmed these revisions again shortly before his death for “everyone” to adhere to. See this article from the Philadelphia Orchestra website, even showing a photograph of the first page of the score with SR’s hand-written note._


Do you have a link handy to that article on the PO site?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Unfortunately the link is dead now.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Becca said:


> *Unfortunately the link is dead now.*


Kind of suspicious if you ask me... Guess we can rule out "natural causes"... Just when the link was needed - suddenly it turns up dead - and you, no doubt, have an alibi and two witnesses prepared to swear that you were out of town when it happened... Looks like another case for Inspector Shaughnessy of Garda Síochána...

Never trust a dame...


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Shaughnessy said:


> Kind of suspicious if you ask me... Guess we can rule out "natural causes"... Just when the link was needed - suddenly it turns up dead - and you, no doubt, have an alibi and two witnesses prepared to swear that you were out of town when it happened... Looks like another case for Inspector Shaughnessy of Garda Síochána...
> 
> Never trust a dame...


Inspector, you might want to start by looking on the Isle of the Dead


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Rachmaninoff was quick to cut. He once said that if too many people were coughing while he performed his Corelli Variations, he would skip a variation. I wonder if Pletnev did other cuts that I somehow missed? (I wasn't listening with the score, just using it for reference when citing passages, so I guess that's possible, but I thought I knew it better than that.)


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Found this regarding Jurowski and the CSO's performance -

Chicago Classical Review » » Jurowski makes admirable CSO debut yet Russian rarities offer mixed rewards

"It’s not easy to devise a Russian program of little known Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Stravinsky. But Vladimir Jurowski managed to do just that with three relative rarifies presented in this week’s Chicago Symphony Orchestra program that kept the warhorses firmly padlocked in the barn.

Rachmaninoff wrote few short orchestra works yet his_ Isle of the Dead_ is one of his finest efforts. A richly spun tone poem, famously inspired by Arnold Bocklin’s series of eerie paintings, the striking work musically reflects a boat bearing a solitary coffin across the River Styx. The composer himself conducted the work in 1909 with the ink still fresh on the score in his Chicago Symphony debut.

Making his own CSO bow, Jurowski took a somewhat revisionist approach, adopting speeds faster than most Russians—but not Rachmaninoff—and shearing off much of the accumulated weight and rhetoric. Yet there was no lack of atmosphere or punch in this lean, concentrated performance with climaxes resplendent and vividly characterized winds and brass, the usual fallible principal horn playing apart."


Prokofiev (Symphony No. 4) got carved up like a roast turkey in the review -

"Did any great composer of the 20th century write as much bad music as Serge Prokofiev? When he was on auto-pilot, Prokofiev’s music regularly descended into a slick, noisy soullessness. As Shostakovich reportedly observed (in Solomon Volkov’s _Testimony_) “Prokofiev too often sacrificed essential things for a flashy effect.”
That trenchant comment encapsulizes Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4 performed Thursday, a work in which musical value is in roughly indirect proportion to volume.
The result is a noisy cynical morass of overscored effects, sounding like a cross between a second-rate ballet—where in fact much of the material originated—and a third-rate Soviet film score. Even the lyrical theme of the Andante—the one interesting motif—comes across as calculated and superficial."


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

"the usual fallible principal horn playing" horn? CSO??


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Becca said:


> *"the usual fallible principal horn playing" horn? CSO??*


It was directed specifically towards principal horn Dale Clevenger who started to regularly get beaten like a drum in the reviews for almost 5 years before he retired in 2013 -









A legendary CSO horn player struggles against time - Chicago Reader


A legendary CSO horn player struggles against time




chicagoreader.com





"If you carefully read the reviews of the CSO in Chicago’s daily papers, you know the critics think Clevenger has fallen far off the form that once made him the most gleaming jewel of the orchestra’s crowning glory, its brass. “A pity Dale Clevenger virtually sabotaged the horn and flute duet,” the _Tribune_‘s John von Rhein wrote in a February 2011 concert review, “but the principal horn at least managed his solo in the finale acceptably.”

Reporting from Mexico in October, he told us that “you could almost hear the sigh of relief among his colleagues when french horn Dale Clevenger made it through the performance unscathed.” And last month, reviewing Mahler’s Third at Symphony Center, von Rhein called the “shockingly poor playing from the horns and trumpets (the principal horn and trumpet in particular), a major blot on an otherwise intelligent and absorbing performance.”

Von Rhein was not alone in his distress. His _Sun-Times_ counterpart, Andrew Patner, allowed in his review of the same concert that “the problems of the principal horn are, alas, by now well-known. That he takes his colleagues with him as they must vamp and play to cover his difficulties has become saddening.” And the write-up by online critic Lawrence Johnson at Chicago Classical Review alluded to “the weekly high-wire act from the CSO’s principal horn.”

After all, Clevenger has not been reviewed with regret only in Chicago. Pierre Boulez, a friend of Clevenger’s, led the CSO at Carnegie Hall two years ago. “Mr. [Mathieu] Dufour, Mr. [Eugene] Izotov and David McGill, the principal bassoonist, made eloquent contributions,” wrote the _New York Times_ critic. “Unfortunately, the same could not be said of the venerable principal French-horn player, Dale Clevenger, whose work fell considerably short of the exceptionally high standard the orchestra otherwise maintained throughout an engagement worth celebrating.”


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Sounds a bit like the old San Diego Symphony where the question was not if the horns would crack, rather when! Things began to turn around about 1990 when they got Lisa Ford as an assistant principal, unfortunately she departed in 1993 to be principal in Gothenburg where she still is. These days the SDSO is a very good regional orchestra, their current MD being Rafael Payare.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Becca said:


> Thanks to all who participated
> 
> A - Russian National Orchestra / Mikhail Pletnev (live in Paris)
> B - Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Vladimir Jurowski
> ...


I'm surprised that Pletnev wasn't better. It's his sort of piece. Not surprised at C at all and B (Jurowski) was mainly let down by the recording/audience. Oh well. Very impressed by the playing of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra but not surprised. They produced a nice thick (but not mushy) strong sound in their recording. Lan Shui is a conductor I really rate. He turned the Copenhageners from a good regional orchestra to a world class one. His Beethoven cycle was testimony to it. Some orchestras would have floundered in Berlin but they sounded superb. I think I must have picked up on the excellent sonics on Berlin (it did remind me of a later Rattle recording, tbh).
A big thank you to Becca for the comparison. It was nice to hear the IOTD again. I've probably not played it for at least 3 years (the last time was Ashkenazy's classic account).


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Merl said:


> I'm surprised that Pletnev wasn't better. It's his sort of piece. Not surprised at C at all and B (Jurowski) was mainly let down by the recording/audience. Oh well. Very impressed by the playing of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra but not surprised. They produced a nice thick (but not mushy) strong sound in their recording. Lan Shui is a conductor I really rate. He turned the Copenhageners from a good regional orchestra to a world class one. His Beethoven cycle was testimony to it. Some orchestras would have floundered in Berlin but they sounded superb. I think I must have picked up on the excellent sonics on Berlin (it did remind me of a later Rattle recording, tbh).
> A big thank you to Becca for the comparison. It was nice to hear the IOTD again. I've probably not played it for at least 3 years (the last time was Ashkenazy's classic account).


Doy you not care for Gardner and/or Frankfurt?


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## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

A few comments on the revealed identities.

I would not have expected Pletnev to be so slow, although perhaps I should because he is slow in a lot of recordings, but his 1999 DG recording runs at a reasonably fast 18:34; together with the 1945 live Koussevitzky (17:08) they are the fastest I know, and I believe they are both uncut, but correct me if I'm wrong. (Rachmaninov and Ormandy also went under 20 mins but theirs are cut.) The only other commercial recordings I know that go under 20 mins are Jansons/St.Petersburg (19:39) and Ashkenazy/Sydney (19:59). For me they are nicely moderate in speed.

I like a lot of Jurowski's recordings for their musicality, so I'm not too surprised that I dislike B the least among the four. But then I am not crazy about his Rachmaninov, including his two rather slow-pedaling LPO recordings of IOTD. Well, at least he was faster in Chicago than in London.

I do have a lot of Gardner's Lutosławski for their modern sound but that's it. Otherwise I have not had any good experience with his recordings, and thanks to free streaming, I have not wasted any money. However, it is interesting to know that in C he has evolved from sermon script writer to sightseeing tour guide.

I did check out Lan Shui's BIS set of Rachmaninov on streaming. Not my cup of tea, so I moved on. I don't remember how I felt, probably not "Hollywood" though. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra does sound like a good band. For sure, the acoustics of the Berlin Philharmonie must have moulded the sound. The engineering team also may have determined that smooth and highlighted sound that I found apparent from the Digital Concert Hall/BP Recordings.

Thanks Becca for organising this round of blindcom. I enjoyed it.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Becca said:


> Do you not care for Gardner and/or Frankfurt?


Gardner has yet to impress me. He was under Elder at the Halle for a while. I'm not writing him off yet (every conductor has a great recording in them) but what I've heard up to now has hardly been exciting.


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## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

Merl said:


> Gardner has yet to impress me. He was under Elder at the Halle for a while. I'm not writing him off yet (every conductor has a great recording in them) but what I've heard up to now has hardly been exciting.


Birds of a feather, but that's just my opinion.


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