March 26, 2018

  • Celebrating the Legacy of Lithuanian Conductor Saulius Sondeckis

     Fatal Affairs: Shchedrin/Schoenberg

    Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, St. Petersburg Camerata;
    Georgian State Chamber Orchestra/Saulius Sondeckis
    Cugate Classics 032
    Total Time:  75:26
    Recording:   (*)***/****
    Performance: ****/****

    This release in the St. Petersburg Classics line from Cugate is one the one hand a celebration of the celebrated Lithuanian conductors, Saulius Sondeckis (1928-2016).  He founded the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra featured here in 1960 and worked with them for over 40 years. The album is a testament of his work with the orchestra and his command of modern chamber music literature.  The other aspect of this release relates to the exploration of color and orchestration.  First through Rodion Shchedrin’s exploration of Bizet’s themes from Carmen, and then through one of Arnold Schoenberg’s more expressive works, Verklaerte Nacht.  Of course, the first was conceived as a ballet and the latter is often used for ballet productions as well.

    It was his wife, the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, who asked Shchedrin to create the ballet music for the choreography being developed by the Cubin ballet maestro Alberto Alonso.  Shostakovich and Khachaturian had already declined to be involved in the project and one can only imagine what either might have done with the same story.  Shchedrin chose to adapt fifteen of Bizet’s themes for the resulting thirteen-movement Carmen Suite.  What makes the results so compelling is his decision to strip the large romantic orchestra down to strings and then layer this with a host of percussion.  The result is a recognizable transformation of Bizet’s music that stays faithful to the sense of the original while also reimagining the general sound.  The strings tend to add the emotional core to the music with the percussion being used both melodically to add a different edge, as well as being used for extra punch to the rhythmic vitality of the music.  The latter is on greater display throughout.

    For many, a classic Boston Pops recording with Arthur Fiedler was the go-to performance of this work.  Gerard Schwarz also made a fabulous recording with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.  The Fiedler performance is filled with crisp attacks and breezy playing in a rather dry acoustic while Schwarz’s version represents one of the first “digital” recordings of the 1990s.  Sondeckis’ reading of the work emphasizes some of the more dramatic and emotional elements of the score, which comes forward gorgeously in the “Adagio”.  His performance adds a level of intensity to the subtle variations of tempo that aid in the rethinking of the original music.  The more lyrical statements also sing beautifully here, even if they feel at times a might thin.  Percussion elements also cut through well here with a good balance between both sections of the ensemble.  The recording, made in 1995 (?), is recorded fairly low which makes the opening a bit harder to pick up but once one makes this adjustment it sounds fine.  Strings feel sometimes a bit closer and percussion have a proper balance that cuts through with just a bit of reverb.

    The Georgian orchestra is used for the Schoenberg performance.  Sondeckis has chosen the more used 1943 chamber orchestra version where Schoenberg added double basses to create better balance in this original sextet.  This is one of those last gasps of the Late Romantic symphonic poem and one of Schoenberg’s rare tonal pieces.  That said, Schoenberg stretches harmony to the breaking point here as the different thematic threads unfold to connect with the Richard Dehmel poem upon which it is based.  The performance here does a fine job of making these grand gestures of the emotional pull of the music.  The recording just sounds a bit too dead at times with a kind of empty larger acoustic sound.  It appears the recording may have been made in the early 1980s so we are likely dealing more with a quality issue at the initial end.  There are some additionally odd edits along the way.  Low strings also seem to bear the brunt of the harsher sound.  Higher string passages seem to get a bit pinched as well and some of the more intense climaxes suffer as a result.  It makes the penultimate movement almost unlistenable at times at the metallic sound quality that results.  The performance’s warmer, and more romantic aspects are better served though.  While this will not be one of the great recordings of this piece, it is still quite powerful and reveals Sondeckis’ command of interpretation for this repertoire work.

    There are no original performance/recording dates for this release which is unfortunate as it would allow for some forgiveness.  The Shchedrin is the jewel of the recording with the Schoenberg tending to suffer acoustically.  The power of the performance still manages to cut through though which may be at least one saving grace honoring this important 20th-Century conductor.