Khachaturian: Ballet Suites (CD review)

Gayaneh and Spartacus. Evgeny Svetlanov, Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra. Brilliant Classics 9256.

Much of the music of Soviet-Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978) has always struck me as rather noisy and bombastic, and that includes even his most-popular pieces like the ballets Gayaneh and Spartacus, which on this disc we see represented by a pair of suites. In their entirety the ballets can be a little tiring, so it's more common that we see just highlights such as these.

Khachaturian became one of the giants of music in the Soviet Union, yet like so many of his contemporaries, the Communist Party did not always favor his works. His Cello Concerto of 1946 was so out of line with the traditional guidelines of the Party that shortly thereafter they ousted him from the Composers' Union over it and other things, and it took him a while to regain their favor. Turns out, the Party's official disapproval so affected him, he later said he considered giving up composing and starting some new profession instead.

In any case, his first attempt at a ballet, Shchastye ("Happiness"), in 1939 did not go particularly well so he reworked it into the ballet represented here, Gayaneh, completed in 1942. It's the story of a young Armenian farm woman named Gayaneh. In the original version, Khachaturian had both a love angle and an Armenian national angle, but he later figured it best to go with the just the romance, adding local color with Armenian and Central Asian folk tunes. Because the music celebrated the friendships among the varied peoples of the Soviet Union, the Party leaders liked it. Afterwards, he finished Spartacus in 1954, the Soviet leaders pleased that he had chosen a "hero of the Proletariat," the Roman slave who led an uprising against the oppressive Roman Empire.

Evgeny Svetlanov (1928-2002) was a Russian conductor and composer who became almost as famous as Khachaturian; in fact, he, too, got into trouble with the government, only in Svetlanov's case it was because they said he wasn't spending enough time with the state-sponsored orchestra he led, and they fired him. The conductor made the present recording with the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra just a year or two before he died, and one couldn't ask for more authoritative performances.

However, as a comparison, I used the EMI recording that Aram Khachaturian himself made with the LSO in 1977, coincidentally just a year or so before he, too, died. Svetlanov, as expected being the old hand he was at such things, holds his own with the composer quite nicely. Indeed, I found Svetlanov more lyrical than Khachaturian in the slower movements and almost as intense in the faster ones. What's more, even though EMI produced a recording of near-demonstration quality, the present Brilliant Classics disc holds its own as well.

Anyway, Svetlanov performs suites from both ballets, Gayaneh containing ten selections, Spartacus five. The composer himself extracted various suites from the ballets, and conductors have been making their own selections for many years now. This one contains most of the music we would easily recognize.

In Gayaneh, the stands-outs include the Lullaby because, of course, it's anything but a traditional "lullaby"; the Adagio, famously used by director Stanley Kubrick in his movie 2001: A Space Odyssey; Lezghinka and Dance with the Tambourines, with their scintillating rhythms; and, naturally, the Sabre Dance, a genuine show-stopper. Interestingly, Khachaturian later said he never cared for the Sabre Dance, writing it in a single evening and considering it something of a joke.

While Spartacus doesn't have quite as much recognizable music in it as that of Gayaneh, it does contain much good material. It may seem surprising but the Spartacus selections offered here are actually more serene than the Gayaneh pieces. Aegina's Dance is especially entrancing, and, again, it's the Adagio that steals the show, beautifully rendered by Svetlanov and his forces.

Recorded in January, 2000, in Moscow, the sound is excellent by any standard, as transparent and dynamic as any audiophile could want. While it's a tad close, it's not so close as to be a major detriment to the music, and only the orchestral depth suffers slightly, not sounding quite as deep or as open as one could wish. There's a nicely extended high end involved, some decent bass, and good transient impact all the way around. It's clean, enjoyable sound.

JJP

Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

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"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa