Here’s another first rate addition to DG’s Panorama series, a series that seems to alternate intelligently planned compilations with programs that look like they’ve been put together by throwing the master tapes down a staircase and picking the ones that make it to the bottom. Richter’s Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto is a classic, and both of Ashkenazy’s performances (The Bells and the Paganini Rhapsody) as conductor and soloist respectively, number among the best around. Maazel’s Second Symphony is a swift, light, elegant, almost “un-Russian” reading (similar to Alfred Wallenstein’s earlier EMI version, but of course uncut), which certainly owes its inspiration to the way the composer played his own music. The approach suits the Berlin Philharmonic very well, though the recording was (and remains) a somewhat harsh, airless, glaring example of early digital. Still, many will enjoy the un-sticky approach. A perfectly decent performance of Vocalise (what isn’t?) rounds off as fine a “basic Rachmaninov” orchestral music survey as we’re likely to see.
