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Glazunov Symphonies Reborn
Posted by Robin on April 18, 2010, 1:58 am
In this 2003 review Paul Shoemaker wrote: "Fedoseyev's Glazunov Fifth Symphony recording is one of the greatest recordings of anything ever made, but unfortunate deterioration of the master tape probably means we'll never see it on commercial CD."
I'm glad to report that the impossible has happened, and moreover that the famous recording of the fifth sounds pretty good with no obvious flaws. The whole cycle has been re-issued on the Russian "Venezia" label, and a great deal of care has been taken in the transfer. Hearing this set again has re-inforced my opinion that it is consistently the most vital of any of the complete cycles, and (with all due respect to messrs. Svetlanov, Rozhdestvensky Polyansky et al) the most Russian sounding.
There doesn't appear to be a distributor for this label anywhere in Western Europe (hope you are taking note of this, Len!) but you can order it from Japan of all places, see the link below.
This cycle COMPLETE has been available as a DOWNLOAD only from Amazon for the absurd price of £5.99 for all 8 symphonies plus the Op.76 March for some time. Type in Fedoseyev Glazunov and up it pops. It is probably the best value download there is at the moment. Transfers are OK not great - but then Melodiya was always a bit harsh and glassy. Symphony 5 is in relatively poor sound but I agree the power of the playing as a whole compensates and for the price of 1 Naxos CD........!!??
Yes, I was aware of the MP3 version - yours is the first comment I have heard regarding it - I may just try to see how it differs.
The Venezia edition goes to great length to warn of "dropout, distortion, noise ... caused by the original master tape" - this in English in a booklet that otherwise is all in Russian, but the actual defects are very minor. I also have the recordings on LP so when time permits I will attempt to compare all three versions.
