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[ CLASSICAL DVD AND CD REVIEWS ]

NSO LIVE Mahler, Shostakovich Chien Wen-pin, conductor NSO005-6

Taiwan’s National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), which has to call itself the Philharmonia Taiwan when playing abroad, has produced a pair of superb CDs of live performances given under its former music director Chien Wen-pin (簡文彬). They feature Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8, with the famous Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 added as an extra track.

The performance of both symphonies is world-class. In the Mahler, the slow third movement is heart-breakingly beautiful (far more so than the bonus Adagietto from the Symphony No. 5 for some reason). It’s one of the finest renderings you’re likely to hear anywhere. All instruments seem caught up in the spell of this music. Soprano Ching Wu (吳青) adds her pure tones to the last movement, and this Symphony No. 4 proves absorbing and wonderful from beginning to end.

Shostakovich’s Eighth is a contro-versial work, dismissed by one critic as “displaying the strained excesses of a depleted imagination.” It was surely chosen for this CD only because Chien thought it was the finest performance in his Shostakovich cycle. However, this is a version that could win over doubters — it’s magnificent in every way. Both CDs are fitting tribute to both Chien and to Taiwan’s finest orchestra, with demonstration quality sound from recording wizard Yu Tzu-tse (尤子澤). Copies are available at Jingo outlets, www.artsticket.com.tw (NTCH site) and at NSO concerts.

ALL THE RUSSIAS A Musical Journey 1 Gergiev, Marinsky Theater WellGoUSA WD-264

Staying with things Russian, watching the first installment of Well Go USA’s three DVD set All the Russias is a moving experience. There will be five hour-long films in all, and this DVD contains the opening two. They’re investigations into aspects of Russian life as reflected in its classical music, with the Marinsky Theater’s Valery Gergiev providing most, but not all, of the commentary — you also see monks and experts of various kinds.

RACHEL CHEUNG: KEYBOARD PRODIGY Live in Recital Miami International Piano Festival Video Artists International 4427

The first film is about the influence of folk music on the 19th-century Russian composers, developing into a disquisition on rural Russia in general. Whereas 100 years ago 87 percent of Russians lived in the country, today a similar percentage lives in cities. There are scenes of abandoned villages as well as of frozen landscapes and the arrival of spring, and extracts from operas and orchestral pieces illustrate how folk themes were incorporated into their works by the likes of Glinka and Tchaikovsky.

MASCAGNI, LEONCAVALLO Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci Karajan DGM 073 4389

The second film, about the role of religion in Russian life, is even more striking. There’s footage dating from 1923 of a Siberian shaman performing a ritual, fragments of a performance of some rasping 11th-century plainsong (so different from the sweet Western variety), and more film of gorgeous onion-domed churches being razed to the ground during the Russian Revolution.

The conclusions these TV-like features come to are unambiguous — some people at least must return to the land or Russia is lost, and Communism’s attempt to eradicate religion from the hearts of the Russian people was doomed to failure. Some very fine music — by Arvo Part, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rachmaninov, among many others — is brought in to support both these arguments.

Rachel Cheung (張緯晴) is a young pianist in the habit of winning first prizes all over the world — in Ukraine, Llangollen, Wales, Salt Lake City, Utah, and her native Hong Kong. Video Artists International (VAI) has issued a DVD of her performance at the Miami International Piano Festival in 2005, and it’s astonishing to see both technical mastery and emotional expressiveness at such a young age — she was 13 at the time. She plays Bach, Liszt, Faure and a Dixie-like encore by Copland with equal confidence and brio. It’s an astonishing performance and Cheung is set to join the long line of pianists of Chinese extraction who have taken the classical world by storm.

For years I’ve wondered why the two one-act operas Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci are always performed in that order. Last week, watching the DVD of Karajan’s versions from 1968 and 1970, I suddenly saw the answer — it’s because Pagliacci is the finer work.

Last month I wrote that Jon Vickers’ singing of Vesti la Giubba — all I had seen of either piece at the time — had “less than total visual clarity,” but I now realize this was because the image was intended to be of him looking at himself in a cheap hand mirror. The reality is that both operas are etched with astonishing vividness and color, as well as being highly dramatic. Karajan, who was “artistic supervisor” as well as conductor, mixes onstage action with Sicilian landscapes in Cavalleria Rusticana and urban back streets in Pagliacci.

It’s the stars, though, that are the big draw. In the first opera, Fiorenza Cossotto is a fierce and yet also soulful Santuzza, with Gianfranco Ceccele as a moody but implacable Turiddu. But most of all, it’s Vickers — as Canio in Pagliacci — who is incomparably wonderful, and supported by a very strong cast, notably Peter Glossop as Tonio. These are probably the two most dynamic melodramas, both based on sexual jealousy, in all Italian opera, and their release on this single DVD will inevitably be compared with Zeffirelli’s 1983 pair with Placido Domingo and Teresa Stratas. It’s impossible to choose between them, and the only solution is therefore to buy them both.


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