Rachmaninoff: The Bells & Symphonic Dances

Karina Canellakis and her Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra continue to impress, aided significantly by stunning Pentatone sound. Offering an excellent sense of front-to-back perspective, the recording comfortably accommodates a wide dynamic range.

Having recorded extensively in Prokofiev and Shostakovich, the Dutch ensemble boasts a convincing Slavic twang. Even if their strings lack the sheer tonal heft of Evgeny Svetlanov’s USSR State Symphony Orchestra or Pavel Kogan’s Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, there is ample compensation from the brass. Their power and volume never devolve into the blaring characteristic of those Soviet performances, nor do the horns ever duplicate the distracting vibrato found in earlier readings.
Revisiting Vasily Petrenko’s recent recording of The Bells with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (review), one might suggest that performance finally affirmed Sergei Rachmaninoff‘s belief that it was his finest work. Canellakis achieves the exact same feat here. Throughout the first three movements, she adopts a marginally slower pace than Petrenko, yet her shaping remains equally impressive, constantly serving the dramatic expression of the text.

Idiomatic-sounding Rachmaninov from the Netherlands – and a coupling replete with memories of the homeland resonating from afar. It’s easy to forget that the four evocations of The Bells after Edgar Allan Poe were set down in Rome. A city of bells, for sure – as with every Italian city, large or small – but without, perhaps, the weight of a troubled history sat on the shoulders of Mother Russia. Poe’s texts awakened all of that in Rachmaninov and his response to them – both personal and universal –
was/is thrilling.

The Bells is for me the better of the two performances here, which is not to underestimate Karina Canellakis’s prowess in this repertoire but rather to acknowledge that on the day the added dimension of words and voices unlocked something really vital in these forces. The playful sleigh-riding of the opening movement is duly animated and light-catching with that startling moment where the tenor, Dmytro Popov, with one word ‘listen’ silences everything and everyone in one breath-catching moment.