Soviet Conductor Russian Arias

Rating:
Summary: "To go without music is to forgo happiness"
Review: This title tops for my money the new batch of EMI Classic Archive releases. Commercially available and good quality footage of the legendary Russian conductor Evgeny Mravinsky (1903-1988) is still something of a rarity, but here we get as part of an extensive biographic survey produced by the BBC (2003) loads of first-rate material - fragments from rehearsals, concerts, and even home-made video's. Interviews with the conductor's widow, members of the Leningrad Philharmonic and fellow-conductors who worked with him (mainly Kurt Sanderling and Mariss Jansons) shed new light on the career and personality of this unique musician, caught between the memories of his life in pre-Revolutionary Russia and his artistic pre-eminence within a Soviet society which he resented. His association with Dmitry Shostakovich in the 1930s and 1940s, of whom he premiered several symphonies in spite of the composer's repeated problems with the Stalinist government, was in this respect characteristic.

The documentary is followed by two concert performances of Mravinsky with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra in Weber's "Oberon" and Tchaikovsky's "Francesca da Rimini", one of the conductor's signature works, respectively dating from 1978 and 1983. The sound quality leaves a lot to be desired, but to see Mravinsky in action at such length is in itself an exhilarating experience, especially because the largely static camera almost exclusively focuses on him.

If you can find it on the DVD there is also an extensive bonus in the form of a 1971 BBC-Proms concert of Tchaikovsky's 4th by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (and recently released on CD as part of the BBC Legends series). A solid performance, well recorded (courtesy of Brian Large) but one that leaves you with as much regret that it wasn't Mravinsky instead of Rozhdestvensky who was filmed.

(Finally, Amazon erroneously gave this item the subtitle Russian arias, while in fact there are none on this disc.)