I have listened to the very end of the Rach Symphony 3 as a kind of bet to myself.... I wondered how it would be played and indeed I was right..... breathtakingly fast and furious. Remarkable that it holds together at that speed so in that sense a tour de force but in fact so fast that it looses any kind of musical logic.
I stand by my praise of the Roman trilogy. I think that remains the disc where the virtues of the playing, engineering and conducting style come together best. Reiner after all never recorded "Festivals" (some might say that is little loss to the world given the nature of the piece) so I don't think a direct comparison there is fair since its not a direct comparison.
On a tangent - I personally prefer the repeat in the Rach 2nd symphony to be taken - and the Rohzdestvensky performance is a perfect example of why it works. After all the composer chose to write the repeat - as he does in the 3rd but not in the 1st so I think it fair to assume he did it for structural rather than 'traditional' reasons. The repeat is always observed in No.3 so why not No.2.
Of course a performance can be great without the repeat - one of my all time favourites is Svetlanov with the Bolshoi who take no repeat and then chop the finale to pieces but the spirit of the work blazes.
In his review of the John Wilson Rachmaninoff Nr.2 Ralph Moore refers to the Rozhdestvensky recording of the symphony as "notably more leisurely" in comparison (actually some ten minutes longer he writes).
What he doesn't mention is that the reason Rozhdestvensky is longer in the first movement is because he takes the exposition repeat whereas Wilson – and the vast majority of conductors – does not.
This doesn't make Wilson's performance swift; it places his performance entirely in the range of all of the conductors who do not take the exposition repeat in the first movement.
Rozhdestvensky isn't an outlier compared with say, Sanderling and the Philharmonia, or Arwel Hughes, both of whom also take the repeat. Others who do are Litton and José Cura - possibly the best if you want this particular view of the symphony.
Ralph can write about timings - but the context of the performances is also relevant if he does.
The repeat is contentious in my view (many disagree with me, I know). There are any number of superb performances without the repeat that show why it's unnecessary - but very few with it that make the symphony work.
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