Classical Candor: Masterpieces in Miniature (SACD review)

Masterpieces in Miniature (SACD review)

Michael Tilson Thomas, San Francisco Symphony; Yuja Wang, piano. SFS Media 821936-0060-2.

First off, I have to admit a bias: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the San Francisco Symphony has always been my hometown orchestra, so to speak. I remember first hearing them while I was kid back in the early Fifties, a school (or Sunday school) outing to one of the symphony's annual Nutcracker specials, if memory serves me right. In any case, even though the Bay Area has a multitude of fine orchestras, I have always considered the San Francisco Symphony the king of the hill, one of the greatest orchestras ever. Maybe that's why I felt my opinion vindicated when a few years ago Gramophone magazine listed the San Francisco Symphony among the ten best orchestras in the world. Yeah, well, I could have told them that.

In Masterpieces in Miniature Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas and his orchestra present twelve short favorite pieces by twelve familiar composers, each of the pieces a polished little gem under the conductor and ensemble. Tilson Thomas imbues them with energy, subtlety, refinement, and grace as the occasion demands, and the orchestra plays them with vigor, nuance, culture, and élan always. Together, the conductor and orchestra provide a polish and sparkle to make even the most timeworn of these warhorses sound fresh again.

Since I haven't the time or the energy to comment on every piece of music on the program, I'll just mention what they are and point out a few favorites. The disc includes Henry Litolff's Scherzo from Concerto symphonique No. 4, with Yuja Wang, piano; Gustav Mahler's Blumine; Gabriel Fauré's Pavane; Claude Debussy's La Plus que lente; Franz Schubert's Entr' acte No.3 from Rosamunde; Charles Ives and Henry Brant's The Alcotts from A Concord Symphony; Sergei Rachmaninov's Vocalise; Antonin Dvorák's Legend No. 6; Jean Sibelius's Valse triste; Frederick Delius's On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring; Edvard Grieg's The Last Spring; and Leo Delibes's Cortége de Bacchus from his ballet Sylvia.

Pianist Yuja Wang gets things off to a rollicking good start in Litolff's Scherzo, taken at a pace that might have left some ensembles behind. Not here. The music comes off in a sprightly, witty fashion, and the only thing that disappointed me was that Wang doesn't appear on any more of the program's selections.

Tilson Thomas shows his skills as a seasoned Mahler interpreter in Blumine, which the composer probably wrote originally as a stand-alone piece, then later incorporated into his First Symphony, only later cut. It works best as we hear it here, vaguely melancholic and atmospheric, with a wonderful trumpet solo.

Under Tilson Thomas, Faure's Pavane flows gracefully and stylishly along; Schubert's Entr'acte is as beautiful and lyrical as one could want; Rachmaninov's Vocalise for orchestra sounds expectedly enchanting; Sibelius's Valse triste comes across appropriately sad and wistful; and Delibes's Cortege de Bacchus seems almost Elgarian, even though it predates Elgar by some years.

Anybody's recording of Delius's On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring has stiff competition from its original advocate, Sir Thomas Beecham, yet Tilson Thomas manages pretty well to convey its sensitive changes of color, expression, and inflection. Otherwise, the music can merely come off as repetitious and meandering. Despite the pleasing character and vitality of some of the other pieces on the disc, this one touched me the most with its delicate beauty.

Producer Jack Vad and engineers Roni Jiles, Gus Pollek, Dann Thompson, and Jonathon Stevens recorded all the works live at Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, California. They recorded "The Alcotts" in 96 kHz/24-bit audio in February 2010 and the rest in PCM 192 kHz/24-bit audio in September 2013 and May 2014. What's more, they recorded the music for hybrid two-channel (regular CD and SACD) and multichannel (SACD) playback from an SACD. I listened in two-channel SACD.

It's all a rather elaborate recording considering the engineers captured the resultant sound before a live audience. Fortunately, the audience is pretty quiet throughout the performances; the only offset is that the engineers had to record the orchestra somewhat closely, so we don't get quite as much sense of place, environment, or dimensionality as we might like. There is, however, just enough hall resonance to make everything sound fairly natural, with no jagged edges, forwardness, or brightness. Stereo spread is understandably wide, the dynamics and impact appear strong. The frequency response covers most of the spectrum nicely (although the top and bottom ends seem slightly rolled off), and the overall clarity is fine despite some softness in the presentation. An inevitable eruption of unnecessary applause occurs only after the final number.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

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

Masterpieces in Miniature (SACD review)

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"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa