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Reviews: Orchestral Spectacular - Bruckner Orchester Linz/Bernhard Klee

Reviews: 1

Review by Dinko October 15, 2003 (8 of 8 found this review helpful)
Performance:   Sonics:
It may be orchestral, but it sure isn't spectacular.

This recording benefits from a very detailed instrumental picture where every instrument and group of instruments is clearly defined and well separated from the rest.
Unfortunately, that's the only good part.

I find volume to be fairly low. I need to push the volume knob at twice the level I usually listen to, if I want to enjoy the same impact. Not that there is much impact to begin with. There seems to be very little bass. The timpani are there, they just have no punch.
There is an overall recessed feel to the recording, as if recorded in a stadium with microphones hanging from the Good Year blimp.

The stereo layer is underwhelming. The surround program is not among the best, as it makes the music sound more distant and even somewhat blurred and less detailed relative to the stereo program.

The pompous liner notes state that "This is classical music as you have never heard it before." True... I have heard better.

The performance is mostly limp. Any such program of orchestral fireworks, measures itself directly with all the previous performances of these same cues. In all tracks, the "renowned" Bruckner Orchester Linz comes as second rate when compared with other better bands. The Sorcerer's Apprentice is limp and incoherent. No magic or sorcery here.

The Ruslan and Ludmila overture takes an endless 5:46 - that's compared to the average of 5 minutes.
Fourty-six seconds may not seem like a great difference, but with this particular overture which depends uniquely on energy, 46 seconds is like the differnce between a sad funeral procession and a glorious victory march.
Barber's Adagio for Strings has neither the tension found in Schippers/New York Philharmonic, nor the poetic beauty of Tennstedt/Philadelphia. Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah Bacchanale is too much on the cute side, not vulgar enough.

It's not all bad.
Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers is given a good reading, making it sound more like a Strauss waltz than other versions. Khatchaturian's Sabre Dance is also decent.
But there is little here to warrant much interest. Most of the tracks have been done better elsewhere, in both sonics and performance.

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