As so often happens in the classical music business, a work may go unrecorded for years, and then suddenly show up in multiple versions. In this case, Reference Recordings’ new Rimsky-Korsakov collection appears in tandem with Teldec’s featuring the New York Philharmonic and Kurt Masur. Both discs have one thing in common: the performance of Scheherazade is better than its coupling, though the couplings do differ. José Serebrier directs a straightforward, exciting, unsubtle performance whose principal attraction is the fact that he’s spectacularly recorded in typical RR style. The London Philharmonic plays with reasonable discipline, though in the first movement the strings have a tendency to rush the beat. Purely as sound, this is a hugely enjoyable disc and certainly a good, if not great presentation of the music. The coupling, Rimsky’s fabulous Russian Easter [Festival] Overture, which gets called “The Great Russian Easter” for some weird reason on the back of the jewel box, is less successful than Scheherazade, particularly in its closing pages where the percussion parts (where’s the tam-tam?) get lost in the general din, clearly a fault of the conductor and not the engineers. The playing of the orchestra also is less disciplined, and anyone who has heard what a conductor like Markevitch makes of the piece (with the Concertgebouw on Philips) will simply have no patience for anything less. But if it’s great sound you’re after, Serebrier’s Scheherazade may be just the ticket.
