Great Conductors – Igor Markevitch

0 of 5 stars

Igor Markevitch
Chabrier, Debussy, Glinka, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Verdi
Recorded 1956-67


Reviewed by: Bill Newman

Reviewed: August 2002
CD No: IMG Artists CZS 5 75124 2 (2 CDs)
Duration:

Here is a case of a conductor well-represented on disc, with recorded material – as far as I can establish – still prevalent and locatable on various labels.

I think that Markevitch’s earlier EMI recordings on the English Columbia label for Walter Legge are his most outstanding. In good mono sound from the early 1950s, they are worth checking out to see if anything has escaped the selection board. LP box sets like ’Homage to Diaghilev’ and recordings with the French National Orchestra such as Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances.

It is good to have Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony back again, next to the Pathétique the composer’s symphonic masterwork. I would have preferred Rimsky-Korsakov’s Le Coq d’Or suite instead of the dances from Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar. Debussy’s La mer, in the Lamoureux recording, is splendid. The addition of Daphnis and Chloe (Suite 2) by the North German Orchestra is questionable and Till Eulenspiegel does not measure up to Erich Kleiber’s.

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