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Musical Discussions
Topic: The New sound of London Symphony Orchestra

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 12-31-2009
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After a few deliberations I picked the Prokofiev’s Complete Symphonies box with Valery Gergiev conducting his new London Symphony Orchestra. It looks like London sound got much warmer and friendlier under Gergiev. I also heard a lot of positive buzz about the Gergiev’s Prokofiev, so let see how it goes.

I need to mention that London Symphony Orchestra has own label the LSO LIVE

http://lso.co.uk/buyrecordings/

Where some of the examples of new London sound reflected. The sad parts that the idiots who release the recordings made them in SACD format. I do not play SACD but the CD layer that those disk have is absolutely horrible. So, the cretins pretty much vandalized the LSO 2007-2009 recordings. The good part about the Prokofiev’s Complete Symphonies box is that it has no idiotic SACD layer and I presume it was a pure PCM recording.

I did not get the box yet but I think it might be interesting. I am not a huge fun of Prokofiev’s Symphonies and LSO generally but I was promised that this time it might be different.

The Cat
Posted by Romy the Cat on 01-04-2010
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I had today so much fan that I did not expected. The Gergiev’s Prokofiev with London Symphony turned out to be a truly devilish ride - a phenomenal performance. Mind you that not everything perfect and Gergiev play his own anti-romantic, hard-code, anal-technical, non-spiritual Prokofiev, but the level of presentation of this version ny LSO is just stunning. It is not the best Prokofiev but it is a spectacular firework of very smartly-organized sounds on the Prokofiev’s thymes. The London Symphony truly had outdone themselves very different sound from the cold crap that they use to have before. Here and there they were screwed by recording techniques, here and there they play overly predictable and reminded the Avatar plot but all-together it was an astoundingly interesting ride. It is not a definitive Prokofiev but it is one of the greatest takes on the Prokofiev I ever heard. That was probably one of the 3 top albums I have bought in 2009. The very best $30 I even spent for 4CDs and 7 symphonies.

The Cat

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