Fans of the great Sergey Koussevitzky and "his" Boston Symphony Orchestra will warmly welcome this 2007 disc from Guild. Half the program is dedicated to their lyrical and moving 1947 recording of Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony, a work that was then only five years old. Some may prefer John Barbirolli and the Hallé's poignant 1944 world-premiere recording, but Koussevitzky is wholly sympathetic to the work's tone of hard-won contentment, and the Boston Symphony summons passion on par with the Hallé while playing with a ...
Read More
Fans of the great Sergey Koussevitzky and "his" Boston Symphony Orchestra will warmly welcome this 2007 disc from Guild. Half the program is dedicated to their lyrical and moving 1947 recording of Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony, a work that was then only five years old. Some may prefer John Barbirolli and the Hallé's poignant 1944 world-premiere recording, but Koussevitzky is wholly sympathetic to the work's tone of hard-won contentment, and the Boston Symphony summons passion on par with the Hallé while playing with a slightly more cogent ensemble.The other half is given to works by Russian composers: a 1944 recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's arrangement of Mussorgsky's A Night on the Bare Mountain, an undated recording of his orchestration of the same composer's Dawn over the Moscow River and an undated recording of Tchaikovsky's Symphonic Fantasy after Dante's Francesca da Rimini. All three are brightly colorful, vividly emotional performances with perhaps the best being the Dawn over the Moscow River...
Read Less