Friendly folk the Scythians; given, it would seem, to blood drinking amongst other things. And Prokofiev's suite was expressly intended to commit aural G. B. H. on its hapless listeners. Try the end—the sun-god appearing to a crescendo of metal and searing, stratospheric woodwind—from Jarvi's Chandos disc at a 'realistic' volume setting, and tinnitus is almost guaranteed. Mata's new version is a more beautiful listening experience. Tempos are slower, the brass less intimidating (though trombones rasp magnificently at the start of the second movement) and the sound, whilst yielding nothing to Chandos in fortissimo force, is more comfortable. Jarvi, teeth bared and nostrils flared, probably gets closer to the core of this heartless score.
Summer is the season more consistently evoked than spring in Mata's Rite; the opening is curiously drowsy, with delicate woodwind figurations rather than vigorously assertive ones. Clarity of string textures, the 'buzzing' trills in the ''Spring Augurs'' for example, also raise the temperature several degrees, and an almost impressionist glow informs the start of Part 2. Very mysteriously circling adolescents testify to a care that has gone into the searching out, balancing and phrasing of the sonorities that is too often absent from Mehta's New York account. In fact, it is very much a case of brain versus brawn here. Admiration extends for Mata's dedication and textural control, but one's limbs remain obstinately static. His is a thought provoking but ultimately polite Rite and I presume the decision to offer us an upfront pumping bass drum and very distant timpani has to do with the capacity of the latter for masking the rest of the orchestra.
Which is precisely what happened (and how!) in Mehta's ''Glorification'' (after fig. 114, track 11, 0'50''). The effect is not so much pagan as just plain crude. And Mehta does not seem to be bothered with the poco a poco accelerando leading to the ''Glorification''. Instead he doubles the pace in one bar (at fig. 102, track 10, 3'01''). This is a swifter moving Rite than Mata's with plenty of beefy percussive impact but little of the rhythmic vitality that the composer (CBS) and Rattle (EMI) achieve through working at clarity of texture and timbral contrasts. And there are too many dead passages where the New York Philharmonic sound on auto-pilot (most of the introduction to Part 2, for example, with some sloppy playing from the strings). The sound doesn't help: Manhattan Center, New York has an ungrateful sounding acoustic (though DG's recordings there with Sinopoli have produced far more appealing results); the image is distant and lack-lustre, with murky woodwind and under-powered horns.
Nothing offends in Mehta's Symphony in three movements though accents and rhythmic displacements are casually overseen. Compare the bland effect of the finale's opening here with again both the composer (CBS) and Rattle (EMI) whose goose-stepping soldiers are both more threatening and a great deal more ridiculous.'