Review by Norm February 10, 2007 (13 of 14 found this review helpful)
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Wow! This is the kind of disc that justifies your purchase of a multichannel system. So many regular CD versions of this piece wind up with a sonic murk of sound due to the rich orchestration. With this version by Jarvi, transparency is the word, and you hear a wealth of detail lost in competing versions. Yet the richness of the bottom register, so important to underpinning Rachmaninov's works is also readily apparent. So this is by no means "Boulez" clinical or cold.
In addition, Jarvi shapes the playing, as it should be in this one of the most "romantic" of symphonies. The ebb and flow of lines is truly wonderful. My standard version in the past was Ashkenazy with the Concertgebouw (regular CD, not SA-CD) which is a very good performance in a renowned hall. But this new version beats it both in quality of performance and concept as well as richness and transparency of sound. The disc is true 5.1 so there's use of the subwoofer if you have one and that adds especially in a work like this. The back channels are used discretly for hall sound so it comes out natural as if you were there. There is also a wide dynamic range, and Jarvi isn't afraid of letting the sound slowly diminish away. The strings in a couple of movements seem almost to float out of the silence that almost makes you hold your breath at the wonderful playing.
The two filler pieces, Scherzo, and Dances from Aleko are bonuses and not often heard.
I'd truly love to hear more works by Rachmaninov played by this team.
Thanks Norm
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