Glière Symphony No.3 'Ilya Murometz'

[MartinH]

Semloh: I love this symphony: it has so much to offer, it's so atmospheric. I've known it for over 50 years and I'm pretty sure I own every version, old and new, ever released on CD. But, being honest, that last movement is the problem - there are parts of it (the battle scenes) that just go on and on and become tiresome. Even the best recordings struggle to maintain momentum. As much as I detest cuts and other tampering with scores, in the finale some pruning might be a good idea. The first three movements are wonderful as is. Another problem is that no recording could possible capture the full range of dynamics this huge score presents. You would think that modern, digital, even SACD recordings would, but they don't. When I put a version in, I turn the volume up quite high or use headphones. Someone needs to do this score on Blu Ray which presents the best possible sound easily available today.

I would also like to recommend to locate the old Yoav Talmi disk made with the San Diego Symphony. Try Ebay. Yes, it's cut, mostly in the finale. The orchestra plays as well as any other and the early (1988) digital Surround-Sound is superb and most recievers can still decode that format. His timing compared to the complete Downes:

1. Talmi: 21, Downes: 23
2. Talmi: 18, Downes: 21
3. Talmi: 7, Downes: 7
4. Talmi: 20, Downes: 26

[semloh]

Thank you so much for those generous responses. I feel that you've vindicated my initial judgement.

[Christopher]

I love this symphony too - I heard the Downes version first and I was immediately hooked.  I was on a flight from London to Chicago in 2004 and had it on loop the whole time - you can work out how many replays that must have been!

[adriano]

Coming back to the "old" Melodiya recording of "Ilya Muromets" by Natan Rakhlin:
The 1st, the 2nd and the 4th movement have cuts of approx. 2-3 minutes each, but they are very intelligent ones.
This recording is superbly conducted and the orchestra is, of course, a much better one than Scherchen's. There is another surplus: it's the better one of the only two "true Russian" recordings and its sound balance is excellent.
I was never happy with that "Russian Disc" CD transfer ,made in 1996, so I have made a new one myself, using an exellent pressing of the 1975 CBS Columbia LP version. I have done this from a professional turntable with direct digital output - connected to a digital hard disc recorder. It needed some discreet de-clicking and de-crackling, in order to keep the original brilliance - and that is all.
There is an offer of 111 Pounds on Amazon Marketplace for that "Russian Disc" CD version! Anyone who may be interested to hear this private re-mastering, can write me a message.

[MartinH]

I kept that old Rakhlin LP set in it's Columbia incarnation and haven't ever compared it to the Russian Disc release. That could peel paint off the walls, the trumpets are so strident. But there's more than cuts that are "wrong". At one of my favorite passages in the entire work, the marvelous brass chorale in the first movement, around 11:15, Rakhlin deemed it necessary to add a chime part to end each phrase. To be honest, if Gliere had written it I'd probably have no problem with it - but he didn't!

111 pounds for the Russian Disc? Would anyone really pay that? Heck, I'll sell mine to anyone who wants it for 15!

[adriano]

OK Martin...
That extra chimes' section is part of a typical "Russian percussion complex". You can find extra (non-original) percussion in quite a few scores, as, for example, in Scriabin's Symphonies and Tchaikovsky's "Manfred". See also the Glockenspiel in Rachmaninov's First Symphony (Ormandy used it, for example, in his 1966 recording). Parts which were not written at all, but do not ruin the original. Golovanov also liked such "extras".
In my opinion, those soft "Muromets" bells give quite an interesting effect. OK for that missing brass chorale, but there are enough similar chorales in the work :-). As far as the trumpets are concerned (after all, there are 4 of them, against 8 horns!), I don't find them too strident; they do not disturb me (I am used to the typical sound of Russian orchestras and recordings).
Sorry, but mine is just a personal opinion and not a musicologist's.
And, last but not least, one has to admit that Rakhlin's is a magnificent interpretation!

[MartinH]

Yes, it is magnificent. Full-blooded for sure. That strident sound though I think is more an artifact of Melodiya recording methods than anything else. That's quite interesting about the Russian percussion complex...I've never heard that before, but come to think of it, there's a recording of In the Steppes of Central Asia someone did that adds percussion - most memorably sleigh bells. Maybe that also explains that unwritten - and deplorable - bass drum whack added to the last note in the first movement of the Rachmaninoff 2nd.

[adriano]

Quite so, Martin. Don't forget that in the Glière, 4 trumpets have sometimes fortissimo unisoni - doubled by trombones in lower octaves and filled-up by horn harmonies. Such exciting bass writing! Strident brass is not only a Melodiya feature: It must be in the Russian genes... I had to struggle against (too) strident brass whilst working with the Moscow Symphony in persona, but I just adore it. The only thing which drowe me mad sometimes is that they had Horns of inferior manufacture, so they farted a bit too much... But for my Brun recordings I could hire some excellent Bolshoi hornists.

[der79sebas]

What about this version of the Rachlin recording: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B004REB4AA/ref=dm_ws_sp_ps_dp

[Alan Howe]

It's a re-licensing job. Depends what they've done with the sound - you'd have to download it to find out.

[adriano]

Thanks der79sebas.
As far as I can hear from the samples, it sounds good, perhaps a bit too much filtered... In this case I will have to withdraw my offer...

[Alan Howe]

I've downloaded it from Amazon.co.uk. It's very brightly lit, but perfectly acceptable to my ears. By the way, the orchestra is the Moscow RTV Orchestra - although I never know which orchestra is playing under which name!

That said, I'm look forward to hearing the music in up-to-date sound. My copy of Feltz is on its way...

[adriano]

Let's hope that Melodiya will do a re-issue of the Rakhlin one day... Their remasterings are excellent. The Russian Disc label (they started as a US Company) has done quite a few not always satisfactory remasterings in the past - and some of them were not always authorized licenses. The older, much more interesting titles are no more available, but all recent ones from the "Russian and World Music CD DVD Shop"
http://www.russiancdshop.com/music.php?zobraz=details&id=29051&lang=de

[Alan Howe]

FBerwald asks:

hadrianus, could you elaborate on why you didn't like Falletta's  "Ilya Muromets" - I haven't heard this and I'm curious.

[adriano]

As far as I remember, Alan, this was the subject of an earlier "Murometz" posting, just at the time the Falletta recording was released.