[BBC Music Magazine's Disc of the Month]: 'Right from the start, with those dark, dragging rhythms, there's a sense that something special is afoot here... Gergiev charts the whole labyrinthine course with thrilling assurance [whilst] the virtuosity and sensitivity of the L.S.O - is a continual exhilarating delight.' The Times]: "This is a terrific, gripping performance from Gergiev and the L.S.O of Mahler's Seventh, an edge-of-the-seat experience... Gergiev brings an almost palpable darkness, fear and mystery to the three central movements, giving an impression, in the central scherzo, of hot, tormenting laser lights darting in from all angles, and he imbues the outer movements with an almost frenzied momentum."

All the great reviewing publications, Penguin Guide, Gramophone, International Record Review, gave this release a rapturous reception when first issued. The atmoshpere of a great occasion is caught admirably with impressive timpani and organ, and a special mention for the final Chorus Mysticus bringing a real sense of gravitas and uplift. The massed voices are wonderfully hushed. Outstanding.

This album has the best possible couplings for the inimitable New World Symphony "'Davis offers a story and a sense of conviction that place his performance in a wholly different league.' (BBC Music Magazine 5 stars) "Unmissable... Superb in all respects. Sound quality doesn't come any better than this whatever the price. Don't hesitate!" (Classic CD)

(9th) They capture not only the joyful irreverence but the sense of danger lurking beneath... solo wind playing is excellent throughout... brilliantly played and vividly recorded (CD Review) (15th) "with a superbly vivid Fifteenth, generally hard-driven a la Mravinsky but far more convincingly poised... first movement goes at a frightening lick, deserting the toy shop for the asylum, the slow movement lacks only the very last ounce of desolation and the finale, always intelligently conceived, is suitably emotive at the close. The sound has immediacy and enough depth." (Gramophone)

A natural inheritor of Scriabinesque exoticism, Szymanowski brings out the best in Scriabin's most imaginative interpreters, which is why Gergiev proves such a convincing interpreter... excellent playing from the LSO. Matsuev has his feet... firmly planted on terra firma... The gorgeous return to lushness in the second movement suggests an almost Ravelian sensibility... Matsuev and Gergiev turn the finale into Szymanowski's danse generale. (Gramophone). "Stabat Mater is beautiful and Gergiev has the full measure of it's 23 gorgeous minutes." (MusicWeb).

Also available on Blu-ray

Valery Gergiev, fresh from his appointment as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015, takes his new ensemble to the BBC Proms for a concert of the utmost in drama and vivid musicianship. The brilliant young Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov performs Rachmaninov’s thrillingly virtuosic Piano Concerto No. 3, while the Russian stage and film actor Alexei Petrenko recites the text in Galina Ustvolskaya’s resonant and profound Symphony No.3 ‘Jesus Messiah, Save Us!’. The programme also features a hypnotic Ravel Boléro, an alternately tender, florid and witty Rosenkavalier Suite, and the rousing Hungarian March by Berlioz.

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

Valery Gergiev, fresh from his appointment as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015, takes his new ensemble to the BBC Proms for a concert of the utmost in drama and vivid musicianship. The brilliant young Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov performs Rachmaninov’s thrillingly virtuosic Piano Concerto No. 3, while the Russian stage and film actor Alexei Petrenko recites the text in Galina Ustvolskaya’s resonant and profound Symphony No.3 ‘Jesus Messiah, Save Us!’. The programme also features a hypnotic Ravel Boléro, an alternately tender, florid and witty Rosenkavalier Suite, and the rousing Hungarian March by Berlioz.

Also available on Blu-ray

Hector Berlioz
BENVENUTO CELLINI

Benvenuto Cellini – Burkhard Fritz
Teresa – Maija Kovalevska
Fieramosca – Laurent Naouri
Giacomo Balducci – Brindley Sherratt
Pope Clemens VII – Mikhail Petrenko
Ascanio – Kate Aldrich
Francesco – Xavier Mas
Bernardino – Roberto Tagliavini
Pompeo – Adam Plachetka
Innkeeper – Sung-Keun Park

Vienna State Opera Chorus
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, conductor

Philipp Stölzl, stage director and stage designer
Kathi Maurer, costume design
Duane Schuler, lighting design
Mara Kurotschka, choreographer

Filmed at the Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg, 5, 10 and 15 August 2007.

Picture format: NTSC 19:9
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Surround 5.0 / DTS 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French
Running time: 164 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

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BERLIOZ Benvenuto Cellini • Valery Gergiev, cond; Burkhard Fritz ( Cellini ); Maija Kovaleska ( Teresa ); Laurent Naouri ( Fieramosca ); Kate Aldrich ( Ascanio ); Brindley Sherratt ( Balducci ); Mikhail Petrenko ( Pope Clement VII ); Vienna State Op Ch; Vienna PO • NAXOS 2.110271 (DVD: 163:35) Live: Salzburg 8/5-10-15/2007


This is an eye-popping extravaganza in which stage business keeps pace with, and too often trumps, Berlioz’s most coruscatingly vibrant and scintillantly compelling score. Cellini appears in a helicopter at the rooftop porch of Balducci’s penthouse, framed against the New York skyline; robots help Teresa with her toilet (including shaving her armpits) as Maija Kovaleska delivers herself of her big aria with virtuosic aplomb; Ascanio, too, is a robot—Kate Aldrich deliciously does her “Tra-la-la” aria with head removed (at stage level); Pompeo is a pimp, and hookers are a significant portion of the Mardi Gras crowd; the wheedling Asian innkeeper brandishes an assault rifle; and so on. The animation of static moments—in terms of staging—is clever, entertaining, and often riveting. The Mardi Gras itself is a credibly incredible triumph of garish color, comic incident, choreographically turned hurlyburly, and drama. Even those who care little for Berlioz’s music will find themselves entranced by the spectacle, while those with some regard for the composer may be alternately delighted and appalled. Berlioz’s conception of the artist as a romantic hero is a major casualty. As Cellini, Burkhard Fritz is in heroic voice and magnificent swagger but portrays his man as a gangster; while, between Mardi Gras and his appearance at his atelier, the director has foisted upon him a gratuitous wound, allowing the camera to make much of his pained expressions and bloodied clothes. Why? Pompeo’s blustering aria, boasting his fencing prowess, has been transferred to Fieramosca, which makes no sense whatever as the latter is—and is played throughout to great comic effect by Laurent Naouri—a sneaking pantywaist. English subtitles render maîtres ciseleurs as “master engravers,” a literal translation that ignores Berlioz’s usage to mean master goldsmiths while making nonsense of the Dionysian hymn he lavished upon Cellini’s foundrymen. We never see the Perseus , the statue Cellini’s been commissioned to cast, instead, the mold he threatens to destroy as Pope Clement rebukes him is a picayune Winged Victory of Samothrace —another disturbing dissonance between Berlioz’s straightforward dramatic narrative and director Philipp Stölzl’s pointless, would-be-clever dinking. Within the often silly parameters just outlined, vocally and histrionically this production is beyond all praise. Valery Gergiev’s direction is surefire, though others—Sir Colin Davis, Sir Roger Norrington—have found deeper resonance through significant portions of the score, while the never less than virtuosic Vienna Philharmonic is massive where Berlioz is lean and sinewy. Nevertheless, one comes to the end stunned, thrilled, and viscerally moved. As the cast took richly deserved bows, I, alone in my hovel, stood and cheered! Naxos’s surround sound lets no detail of this teeming, overfull, overrich score escape, delivering all with overwhelming punch. Despite all caveats, highest recommendation.


FANFARE: Adrian Corleonis