What on earth is Philips up to? Valery Gergiev’s Kirov Pathétique is one of the best modern recordings, and it comes with a considerable bonus in the form of the symphonic poem Romeo and Juliet. This newcomer, taken from live performances in 2004, is audibly inferior in every respect: sonically, technically, and even interpretively. Also, kicking around the pirate-recording world there’s a 1999 air-check of this symphony with Gergiev and Vienna that has twice the intensity and even better sound than this. I won’t bore you, as this recording did me, with an exhaustive list of details, but compared to the versions just mentioned this one lacks fire. The string playing is notably scruffy and tensionless; timpani and trombones are ill-caught by the microphones; and balances generally don’t project the music with the necessary impact or clarity. So there you have it: poor value, second-rate performance, even cheesy cover art. Since all of these defects are just plain obvious compared to the prior Philips edition, I can only ask again: “What on earth is Philips up to?”
