Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyson
Right now I'm working my way through a few complete cycles of Shostakovich, namely the Barshai, Haitink, Rozhdestvensky, Kondrashin, and a few Mravinsky recordings for good measure. Wow, talk about different interpretations! Has anyone else heard these (or other) cycles?
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Tyson it would appear you are going to be the Shostakovich veteran here, so you should let us know what sounds best not vice versa
I have 5-6 Jarvi/Chandos and 5-6 Haitink/London CDs and then several other conductors with 1-2 CDs each. As for sound quality many of the newest releases of reduced price Haitink/London series are just spectacular with reference quality dynamic range........if someone was starting out on a budget I would say get
Haitink/London 5,6,7,8,9,10 can't go too wrong there.
For true reference performances may have to go with Russian conductor even if sound is not optimal.
Neemi Jarvi sounds more Russian than Haitink and his Chandos sound is very good if not quite in the London demonstration class level. Jarvi has best set of Prokefiev symphonies so he has good handle on modern Russian classical works in general. To get complete Jarvi set you must combine his Chandos and DG recordings together.
Performance wise I'm sure many of the older Russian sets are very good like Mravinsky, Kondrashin etc but sound quality may be an issue for some from what I read......perhaps you can comment on this aspect. The newer Russian sets under way by Gergiev and Rostrapovich are also probably very good but haven't heard them.
I would like to try some of the
Maxim Shostakovich (composer's son) series on Supraphon label but they are hard to find and expensive.
The
Barshai/Brilliant complete set is surely the cheapest way to get symphonies, but I don't listen to all 15 symphonies and don't know how the individual performances would compare to best available.