Description
Many of the recordings on the London Symphony Orchestra’s LSO Live reproduce single concerts by the orchestra. This one, with two major Rachmaninov orchestral works, draws on two different concerts, but one can understand why the orchestra wanted to release the music this way as part of a larger anniversary celebration for the label. The pairing of The Bells, Op. 35, of 1913, and the Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, of 1940, is a good one, showing how much Rachmaninov’s music changed over the last half of his career. Each work contains bright energies that devolve into gloom before halfway calm conclusions. Yet the paths the two works take — and the general musical moods — are quite different. The Bells is a setting, with chorus and soloists, of a poem by none other than Edgar Allan Poe, translated into Russian and sent to Rachmaninov anonymously by a Russian female student. The four movements refer to and evoke an increasingly grim set of bells, from sleigh bells to “mellow wedding bells,” loud alarm bells, and mournful iron bells. Conductor Edward Gardner brings an international group of soloists, and the live performance has unusual intensity indeed, in the apocalypse-like third-movement alarm bells, with the London Philharmonic Choir delivering full-throated doom. The Symphonic Dances are a more contemplative work, with a language in parts closer to Prokofiev and the Dies irae used as a kind of leitmotiv. Gardner is crisp in this final orchestral work of the composer, with the opening march and its alto saxophone second theme giving way to a dark saltarello finale marked by an increasingly prominent Dies irae. Everything here both connects and is perfectly controlled. Perhaps one reason for pairing the performances is that these works have been performed by the wave of Russian expats much heard on the London music scene, but Gardner proves himself the equal of any of them. The album made classical best-seller charts in the spring of 2025. ~ James Manheim
