It’s time to talk about the king of instruments. I refer, of course, to the tam-tam. They come in all shapes and sizes, and most orchestras of any calibre own a complete arsenal of them. In my thirty-plus years as a percussionist, I’ve accumulated more than a dozen, never mind triangles, cymbals, and even two different size ratchets, a standard one appropriate for quick rhythmic figures such as we find in The Pines of Rome, and a big, loud sucker of the type Strauss asks for in Till Eulenspiegel. My point is simply this: there is no excuse for not selecting the instrument most appropriate to the musical context.
In contemporary music, where percussion writing is quite detailed and often spelled out explicitly, this is seldom a problem; but in traditional tonal or romantic-style music, it’s simply astonishing how little thought conductors and players give to this issue. They troop out the same old instruments no matter what they are playing and no matter what sound the music seems to require.
Consider, then, the climax of the first movement coda in Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony. It consists of short, menacing, fortissimo phrases capped by cymbals and tam-tam in alternation. Both instruments are seldom handled correctly.
One thing should be obvious: the cymbals and tam-tam should balance each other in volume, providing that “one-two punch” that Prokofiev obviously intended. The cymbals are specifically notated to be played suspended until the climax of the phrase when they come together with the tam-tam, and the player should switch to plates. This requirement is seldom observed in performance, and it isn’t here. Then there’s the tam-tam. It’s fashionable today to use Wuhan tam-tams made in China. They are, admittedly, the best for most purposes, but they are often dark in sonority and bigger isn’t necessarily better. To get the right “crash” you have to whack the bejesus out of them, but of course it can be done and it’s tremendously exciting when it is.
The alternative is to use a European model such as Paiste, UFIP, or Meinl, which can be excellent in fortissimos (they are much less effective in soft passages, taking too long to “speak” and lacking the optimal “spread” of timbre). It’s hard to think of a single performance that gets both the cymbal and tam-tam parts right, but you can hear the correct, bright tam-tam sound from Kuchar, Järvi, and, surprisingly, Karajan. Previn/Los Angeles on Philips is probably the best for a dark tam-tam played with the proper force, and amazingly with the correct cymbal parts too. But then, this symphony really was a Previn specialty: both of his recordings are excellent.
Litton, who usually conducts Russian music so masterfully, seems to have a big, dull Wuhan tam-tam that barely cuts through the orchestral texture. As a result, the climax fizzles. There’s simply no excuse for it. It doesn’t help that Litton adopts a relatively slow, lumbering tempo for the first movement generally. He’s on much better form in the scherzo and finale: bright, incisive and up to speed. The slow movement is also quite beautiful, though the climax again suffers from the tam-tam problem. On the whole, then, this is a frustrating performance. It should be better; the players are more than capable, the sonics excellent, but on this occasion it simply doesn’t happen.
As for the coupling, the Scythian Suite basically plays itself if you adopt the right tempos, and Litton certainly does that. It’s noisy, vivid, and atmospheric by turns, even if it can’t redeem the interpretation of the symphony. You may scoff at my emphasis on what some will maintain is a small point of detail, and I can’t really argue with those who don’t especially care about such things. However, the fact is this: either the performers get it right or they don’t; and here, they don’t. Granted, there’s a lot more to this symphony than the climaxes of the first and third movements, but there aren’t many moments in it that are more important, and it’s not unreasonable to suggest that if you ruin those then it cripples the whole.
