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I've been loving Alsop's Prokofiev cycle – I've written elsewhere that her 2nd and 3rd Symphonies are the go-to versions. But here she stumbles. Putting on the newly-delivered CD with great excitement I was horrified at how little impact the music made. This is Prokofiev's great howl of rage interspersed with searing regret and and fear at time running out, for him, for us. I'm sorry to say we get little of that here.
The tempo at the beginning of the first movement seems much too fast. Alsop proceeds at a brisk, strict tempo which doesn't let up until the second subject. Confused, I went to the score and actually on paper she's right. Prokofiev marks it 'Allegro moderato', so actually Alsop is following instructions and the others – Mravinsky, Rostropovich, Leinsdorf – are not (they take it 'moderato'). But, but... At this tempo it just doesn't work. Leinsdorf throws the speed around at every turn, treating the music like Tchaikovsky: that's not marked in the score, but my goodness it works. With him we get high tragedy, not (as here) film music. Rostropovich (who should know) gets an enormous regret into the slow music. Then the ticking, 'inexorable march of time' episodes should be eerily threatening. The development section, where I believe Prokofiev deliberately adopted Shostakovich's manner, must climax as devastatingly as Shostakovich's 5th.
The second movement is rather better, but not as good as others on the market. The tragedy is missing. One gets the feeling Alsop is not in sympathy with this music and so goes (Karajan-like, though he never recorded Prokofiev 6) for opulence of sound as a substitute for real feeling. But in this visceral music, elegance won't do.
Alsop takes the third movement very fast indeed and for the first time in this series this wonderful orchestra cracks. The accompaniment figure in the strings at the start – dum diddle-um, dum diddle-um – requires a very tricky bow technique and at Alsop's speed it's frankly unplayable. The strings (and the rest of the orchestra elsewhere) scrape through but it sounds a scramble. And anyway this tempo is just wrong: Prokofiev wanted to present the finale to the authorities as a happy romp while proper listeners would recognise the clumsiness, the crassness, the philistinism, the cruelty – echoes once more of Shostakovich. This fast tempo scuppers all that.
The recording doesn't help: it's too resonant and lush and deprives the music of any punch. I went back to Alsop's Prokofiev 4 and the sound is much more punchy. As usual with the Sao Paolo there are wonderful players to be heard, especially the cor anglais, first bassoon and first trumpet (in this Symphony we remember the timbre of double reeds, as in the 5th we remember the clarinet). But the piano comes and goes, sometimes clear, sometimes obscured, where it should be a sound of menace wherever it occurs. The percussion lacks guts.
I'm really sorry not to be able to recommend this record. But you come away from Leinsdorf shattered: from this, unmoved.
他の国からのトップレビュー
Daryl Runswick
Alsop stumbles
2016年8月18日に英国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
