Delos make a big pitch about their 'Virtual Reality' recording quality. Ultimately destined for Surround Sound Home Theatre reproduction, it involves, amongst other things, a...

Delos make a big pitch about their 'Virtual Reality' recording quality. Ultimately destined for Surround Sound Home Theatre reproduction, it involves, amongst other things, a careful choice of venue, slightly more than usual spatial separation of the players in the hall, and a pragmatic approach to multi-miking.

Glière's colourful late-romantic Second Symphony is fine choice for the first issue in the series, Just occasionally I thought the woodwind detail too good to be true, but otherwise the results are extremely satisfying, the blend of transparency and warmth being even finer than on the rival BBC Philharmonic recording on Chandos, who pride themselves on such things.

I find I'm slightly less enarnoured of the piece than when I reviewed the Chandos version (when I only had the composer's own rather primitive LP recording as a comparison). Glière never puts a foot wrong, but that's because he's going along trails blazed for him by others long before 1908. Although the romantic parts of Firebird are audibly just round the corner, here the magic is tamed, the fairy-tale domesticated. I still listen with enjoyment, but I do now find the amount of repetition becoming slightly irksome.

Between the two orchestras the honours are fairly even (I fear the Slovak Philharmonic are not remotely a match for either full-price version), though it has to be said that the New Jersey con anglais plays with peerless refinement in the slow movement. In general Macal takes much the same view of the piece as Sir Edward Dowries - the timings are very close indeed - though Macal coaxes slightly more suave phrasing from his musicians.

Delos could have made their disc indispensable by choosing something less well-known than the Red Poppy suite as a filler; but for newcomers to the composer this is certainly a more necessary work than the uninspired Zaporozhy Cossacks tone-poem on Chandos.

-- Gramophone [8/1996]