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Re: Strauss Elektra. . .

The Elektra looks interesting- i read your review- if i understand your coments re the culshaw ring, you don't like the recording? while it's certainly "produced", i find it effective (and of course the performance is wonderful). did you mean the adelaide ring is similarly "produced?"

The Solti/Culshaw Ring is certainly “produced”, but not to the extent that the Solti/Culshaw Elektra is. (See my link below.) I actually do like certain aspects of the Solti Ring, not the least of which is the casting Birgit Nilsson! I even like some of Culshaw’s effects in the Solti Ring, such as Hagen’s call to the vassals. I can’t comment on the Adelaide Ring, since I still have not heard it. I tend to be suspicious, a priori, of any recording made with 65 microphones! (All other things being equal, I’m a minimum microphone kind of guy myself – but there are so many other variables!)

Bychkov has always been one of my favorite conductors, altho i haven't heard him in some of the more traditional germanic rep- the brahms cycle looks interesting.

I bought Bychkov’s Brahms Symphony set on the basis of his outstanding Elektra. Although released on a different label (Avie), the engineering is similarly expert, and I liked Bychkov’s readings. The Cologne orchestra is really on the same wavelength with him, and there’s a wonderful unanimity in how the phrases are inflected. (Just by chance, I’d been listening to the Kertesz/VPO readings shortly before I got the Bychkov, and for me, Bychkov makes Kertesz sound relatively cavalier and uninteresting in these works.) The only thing I didn’t like about the Bychkov set was the gearshift he makes at the end of the Second Symphony, although of course he’s not the only conductor who tries to whip up excitement in this way.



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  • Re: Strauss Elektra. . . - Chris from Lafayette 18:02:50 12/18/06 (0)


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