I've just been listening to Vaughan Williams Job in the recent recording by the Bergen Philharmonic and Andrew Davis.
This is a hybrid SACD from Chandos, and I listened to the standard stereo.
I must say that this s one of the most disappointing issues I have heard for some time, although it got respectable reviews. To my ears the very quiet opening of the work verges on inaudibility, and even when the wids enter they are so quiet that any interplay between them is completely lost. Loud passages on the other hand are overwhelming in my decent sized room.
This would be bearable were it not for the fact that the playing rarely rises above the routine, technically fine but so uncommitted. Considering that Satan plays a large part in the proceedings there is no sense of menace, and most of the time Andrew Davis seems to just want to get on with it.
I have four Boult recordings of Job, together with the excellent Vernon Handley and Lloyd-Jones versions, so I decided to compare Andrew Davis with the last Boult recording with the LSO. A sense of a real performance leaps out of the speakers from the very outset, and the recording has much more immediacy albeit with a narrower dynamic range.
I listened to the passages from Job's comforters onwards to Elihu's dance, lovely violin playing which disappears into the mush on Chandos. The last entry of the saxophone in the Comforters has a lovely counterpoint in the violas which is just not there on the Davis version.
Is all this just a matter of an overseas orchestra just not understanding the idiom? Comments please from anybody who has heard this version.
PS My favourite performance is still the mono Decca with Boult, which he did not quite surpass in the EMI stereo.
This is a hybrid SACD from Chandos, and I listened to the standard stereo.
I must say that this s one of the most disappointing issues I have heard for some time, although it got respectable reviews. To my ears the very quiet opening of the work verges on inaudibility, and even when the wids enter they are so quiet that any interplay between them is completely lost. Loud passages on the other hand are overwhelming in my decent sized room.
This would be bearable were it not for the fact that the playing rarely rises above the routine, technically fine but so uncommitted. Considering that Satan plays a large part in the proceedings there is no sense of menace, and most of the time Andrew Davis seems to just want to get on with it.
I have four Boult recordings of Job, together with the excellent Vernon Handley and Lloyd-Jones versions, so I decided to compare Andrew Davis with the last Boult recording with the LSO. A sense of a real performance leaps out of the speakers from the very outset, and the recording has much more immediacy albeit with a narrower dynamic range.
I listened to the passages from Job's comforters onwards to Elihu's dance, lovely violin playing which disappears into the mush on Chandos. The last entry of the saxophone in the Comforters has a lovely counterpoint in the violas which is just not there on the Davis version.
Is all this just a matter of an overseas orchestra just not understanding the idiom? Comments please from anybody who has heard this version.
PS My favourite performance is still the mono Decca with Boult, which he did not quite surpass in the EMI stereo.