It is unfortunate for Leonard Slatkin and the St Louis Symphony Orchestra that their fresh and direct reading of the complete Swan Lake should arrive simultaneously with Mark Ermler's outstanding set, one of the first issues on the new Royal Opera House label. Consistently, in comparisons between the two, one registers the idiomatic feeling of long acquaintance as well as of the finesse of a Russian conductor. If anyone thought that to get these players to record a score that they must have performed many dozens of times would result in a routine acccount, that is the opposite of what has happened. Released from the Covent Garden pit, the players have responded with both refinement and red-blooded commitment not just to the conductor but to the free, warm acoustic of All Saints' Church, Tooting.
The sound is exceptionally full and open with the brass in particular giving a satisfying weight to the ensemble without hazing over the detail. The atmosphere and sense of presence add to the feeling of the scene being set for this great ballet. By contrast the RCA sound for Slatkin is relatively thin, with nothing like the same body to it and with the violins in particular disappointingly dry. That adds to the feeling of a performance rather too polite, too literal.
When the sound on the new Ermler issue also outshines that on the two other sets I have listed—though by a much narrower margin—the recommendation might seem to be clear, but sadly the promoters of the new label have stretched the piece on to three CDs instead of two, and for most collectors, it will be a question of weighing the new issue's advantages against a price at least 50 per cent more, with the Fedoseyev on the Olympia/Conifer label, even more competitively priced than the other rivals.
Ermler's speeds are often—though by no means always on the slow side, which makes his overall timing rather greater than those of his rivals, but at 153 minutes it would have been by no means impossible to fit the whole ballet on to two CDs. Nor does the extravagant lay-out bring an advantage in eliminating irritating breaks between the discs. Admittedly the First Act is complete on the first disc, and in Act 2 there is no break in the sequence of the six ''Dances des cygnes'' (No. 13), as there is with the other sets, but conversely the break between the second and third discs comes in the middle of the Act 3 Pas de six, after the second of the five variations. It would have been perfectly possible to fit the whole of the last two acts complete on to the last CD, and avoid that, as the two-disc rivals do.
Some of Ermler's broad speeds convey more vividly than any of these rivals the feeling of an accompaniment for dancing, notably in the great Andante of the Act I Pas de deux. With Slatkin, fast and unyielding, one could never imagine any ballerina coping, where—with the leader, John Brown, and the cello principal, David Strange, as the expressive soloists—the vision of the ballet is immediately conjured up by Ermler. Previn's soloists on EMI, Ida Haendel and the LSO's principal, Douglas Cummings, have even more flair, but with less rubato the result, warm and sympathetic, is yet not as idiomatic as with Ermler. Fedoseyev too, like Ermler, uses rubato idiomatically, but his speeds, unlike Ermler's tend to be on the fast side, and those for the Act 3 Pas de six are extraordinarily brisk. Incidentally, there is an uncomfortable join in the new set—presumably an edit—between the harp cadenza of the fifth variation of the Pas de six and the following passage with oboe. There and in the track index between the last two numbers, Nos. 28 and 29, the Ermler set has a discrepancy with the others, though to start the track for the ''Scene finale'' on the pause rather than in the grand sweeping Andante introduction before it is logical enough.'