Cheap A Life In Music: Isaac Stern, Volume 9 (Music) (Bela Bartok, Eugene Ormandy, Leonard Bernstein, Isaac Stern) Price

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Customer Reviews of A Life In Music: Isaac Stern, Volume 9

I'm complaining of two things in particular, namely the playing of the orchestra and the overall sound of the recording. Because the sound of the recording can be summed up very quickly, I'll say that first:

Whoever engineered the sound and the placement of the microphones on this recording should have been fired immedietally after its release, if he or she wasn't. You see, the overall sound of the recording is as though the orchestra has been placed in a tin can, with the microphones and Isaac Stern on the outside; the recording sound is extremely hollow and there are places where the orchestra, even though the whole thing is playing, is virtually inaudibule underneath Stern's thunderously loudly microphoned playing.

Now.. for the orchestra.

Leonard Bernstein was a talented man. His knowledge of music was unending, he was a fantastic composer and he was a fantastic pianist; the charisma in his lectures is rivetting. On the podium, however, his talent lied in his awe-inspiring ability to completely ignore the score. I'm a student of music education, you see, and one of my extreme pet peeves is a performance in which the score is almost totally disregarded in favor of a vulgarly "expressive" interpretation. This you can see in virtually all of Bernstein's recordings of music written after the invention of the metronome, but this performance is the only one I'm concerned with right now.

This is what I did: I checked out my music library's copy of the score of Bartók's second violin concerto to follow along with the recording. Look at this list of balance problems, compiled within the first minute and a half of fifteen in the first movement.

1. Measures 3-6: Horn completely inaudible.
2. Measures 7-15: Orchestral strings inaudible; basses and 'celli *sensed* but not heard.
3. From entry in measure 9 to end: bassoons completely inaudible, even in soft dynamic levels, and the New York Philharmonic has FOUR of them!?
4. Measures 10-28: Clarinets completley inaudible.
5. Measures 15-17: Oboes inaudibule.
6. Measures 16-17: Flute sensed, but not heard.
7. Measures 15-21: TIMPANI inaudible!!
8. Measures 31-34: First six or so notes in clarinet heard, but nothing afterward; the scoring is so light at this point this is absurd.
9. Measure 32: Flute sensed, not heard. Again, scording so light that this should not be so.
10: Measures 31-40: Three horns used and light scoring, but inaudible beyond first attack (more like a splatter than an attack)
11: Measures 34-35: First six notes heard in flute run, but EXTREMELY rushed.
12: First climax, measures 43-51: Whole orchestra is used, forte, but only first violins are actually audible. Flutes are in their highest register but still inaudible. Low strings are sensed but not heard. Oboes? Bassoons? Clarinets? Horns, all four of them?! Measure 49 is thinly scored, but bassoons and oboes are only barely discernable. Bass clarinet in high register but inaudible. Canon-like counterpoint in strings, measures 48-51, is swamped by the raucously loud first violins.

All in the first two minutes of the first movement's fifteen!

Is it so much to ask that, in a Bartók recording, I hear all of what Bartók wrote? Ladies and gentlemen, in a fine orchestra like the New York Philharmonic on a fine label like Sony Classical, there is absolutely no excuse for this horrible balance.

I recommend, instead, Pierre Boulez' performance of the same piece on the Deutsche Grammophon label, with Gil Shaham as the soloist. Granted, Boulez is hardly perfect, but you'll hear more of the score than you will under Bernstein or, indeed, any other.

One star for the orchestra and the morons who engineered this recording, five stars for Isaac Stern.

Definitive reading of the 2nd Violin Concerto
I had never listened much to Bartok's work before hearing Isaac Stern's recording of the Second Violin Conerto, performed with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein. I listened to an old vinyl pressing of the 1958 recording, and through the hiss and pops, came a revealation. The first movement was arresting, full of lyrical, Romantic passages expressed in edgy, Modern tonalities. The second was a divine exercise in contrasts, by turns somber and playful. The third, a robust set of variations that completes the arch begun by the first two movements. Others have played the second conerto with great technical skill, but you can hear the strain of such precision - it exacts a price in warmth, leading to a cold, angular feel. Stern's reading, by contrast, comes across as effortless. He is simply so good that it sounds like he barely has to work at it. The payoff is a solo that penetrates like a confession, an outpouring of bittersweet reverie. Needless to say, I was hooked.

I spotted this CD in Best Buy, of all places. I read the details and discovered that it contained the very same recording that had captivated me years earlier, so I quickly snapped it up. Also on the disc is a 1961 Stern recording of Bartok's First Violin Concerto, with the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Eugene Ormandy. Though no less impressive in its own right, the first concerto is shorter, less ambitious, and more transparently Romantic. Stern and Ormandy handle it deftly.

In all, this is a valuable addition to your collection if you enjoy great 20th-century orchestral music. Buy it because it's Isaac Stern, or buy it because it's Bela Bartok. Either way, buy it.