It’s curious that Delos should choose this release, a program of chamber music lasting just under 48 minutes, as one of its first Super Audio Compact Discs. This is directly opposite to Telarc’s first SACD–an 1812 Overture with enough “live” cannons to sink a battleship. However, it’s the smaller scale of the Delos project that allows you to get a sense of how well the medium recreates musicians in a performing space. The verdict: very well indeed, at least judging by the two-channel layer of this SACD/CD hybrid. Three-dimensional spacing is realistic, and there is both clarity and warmth to the sound, with wide dynamics. The music itself is another matter. There’s a palpable grit and angst in Shostakovich’s harrowing String Quartet No. 8 that’s just plain lacking in the Chamber Symphony arrangement, and Constantine Orbelian’s reading doesn’t do much to help the situation. As much vigor as the Moscow Chamber Orchestra generates for the lacerating Allegro molto second movement, the massed violins’ soft sheen has it sounding like a Mozart serenade. This quality is significantly less in evidence with Yuli Turovsky and I Musici du Montreal on Chandos, who somehow manage to cultivate a sharp edge in their performance.
Next comes Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Piano and Strings. One of his drier works, it seems to rely on the composer’s stock expressions of anger, grief, and despair, but strangely lacks the biting humor and mercurial fancy that so often balance the gloom in his music. (Interestingly, the nervous second movement sounds quite a bit like a Bernard Herrmann chase scene.) Nonetheless, Orbelian and his group bring much conviction to this work, a reflection perhaps of their closer identification with Schnittke’s more contemporary idiom and Orbelian’s personal emotional involvement (the recording is dedicated to his grandparents, who perished under Stalin’s purges). In sum, a partially compelling (if a bit stingy) offering, and a treat for audiophiles.
