"You are awful...but I like you"
Mon, Aug 30 2010, 11:11AM
#2
RE: "You are awful...but I like you"
I listened to Bernstein's Carmen a few months ago - not a "you are awful" recording at all. I was reminded how much I liked James McCracken so started to delve into his back catalogue. There are fewer CDs of him than I had imagined: but what treasures and what underrated performances. The Pagliacci is solid and pretty good and features another neglected singer - Pilar Lorengar. The Fidelio is amazing and the cry of "Gott" is incredible although again not an "awful" performance. I had avoided McCracken's Otello which did have some dreadful reviews, not only for McCracken's 'heart on sleeve' overacting but also for Fisher-Dieskau who never seems to get the respect in Verdi he deserves. I was pleasantly surprised and McCracken's cries of "Sangue, sangue, sangue" are the best I have heard. The monologue is a bit odd - lots of breathy moans which I think would work on stage but don't here, but the end is superb. I think much of this is down to Barbirolli who conducts a slow and detailed performance that really focuses the mind on the music. In conclusion a vastly underrated set that competes with Kleiber, Karajan, Solti, Levine and Maazel, if not quite matching Toscanini, Serafin and Chung. I urge those who have not heard it to try it and would be interested in the views of others.
Mon, Aug 30 2010, 10:44PM
#3
RE: "You are awful...but I like you"
Thanks Martin. I have considered buying the Barbirolli Otello for many years, purely because of him. His co-stars don't really appeal, though. I can't imagine Gwyneth Jones being ideal as Desdemona nor Fisher-Dieskau as Iago. I recoil at his Macbeth and more so his Scarpia on Gardelli and Maazel's recordings of these works where he barks through both roles. I don't think Italian opera was his forte.
I do enjoy reading about recordings which don't receive much critical acclaim though. In thirty years of buying opera recordings I haven't heard a truly awful one. There are several where I think a recording could have been improved if so-and-so had been in the cast and many where artists were cast in roles where they were unsuited. Maybe that's an item for a different discussion. Would you like to start it?
I'm with superhorn and NiklausVogel in admiration of the Solti Tristan. The first time I ever heard it, I broke down in tears at the end in a way I had never done with any other recording, not even Nilsson's Bayreuth recording a few years later under Karl Böhm. That said, it's a shame Solti didn't live long enough to make another recording of the work.
When Rostropovich's LSO Shostakovich 5 came out a few years ago on the LSO Live label, David Fanning, I think, ripped it apart in the pages of Gramophone. I actually find it the most powerful account of the symphony I know, ahead of more critically esteemed recordings by the likes of Haitink (over-rated!), Järvi, Temirkanov, and Mravinsky. Rostropovich takes such a broad tempo in the coda, but he makes it work magnificently.