The spongy, string-dominated opening of this Scheherazade is an immediate turn-off. What happened to the accents? Where are the trombones? (I’ll tell you where: they’re in Fritz Reiner’s magnificent Chicago Symphony recording, recently reissued on an RCA SACD–type Q9100 in Search Reviews.) Vladimir Fedoseyev’s slow tempos and mushy textures so effectively de-fang The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship that you can’t imagine the bored Sultan sparing Scheherazade’s life even for one night. In which case he would have missed out on a generally fine Kalendar Prince movement, where Fedoseyev effectively captures the music’s drama and gets characterful playing from his soloists.
However, it turns out that this is the zenith of the performance. The following Young Prince and Young Princess sounds rushed (the supposedly unison oboe and strings are out of sync), while Fedoseyev turns in a rather ordinary Festival in Baghdad finale (with some occasionally scrappy and out-of-tune string playing). Compare again to Reiner (or Muti, or Bernstein) and you sense that Fedoseyev just doesn’t “get” this piece–not something you would expect from a native Russian conductor. His compatriots Kondrashin and Termikanov know what Scheherazade is supposed to sound like–exciting, exotic, and voluptuous–as they demonstrate with their respective Amsterdam and New York orchestras. Capriccio espagnol proves less elusive for Fedoseyev as he renders the music’s vibrant energy and Spanish coloring with real flair. The recorded sound suffers from the typical limited Melodiya dynamics. Not essential.
