Varujan Kojian, Utah Symphony Orchestra. Reference Recordings RR-11CD.
By John J. Puccio
Better late than never.
Maestro Varujan Kojian and the Utah Symphony recorded this album for Reference Recordings in 1982, and somehow it escaped my attention for some forty years. This despite my having reviewed most other Reference Recordings releases over the years and despite the high praise the disc received for its sound in particular. So now, four decades late, here is my review.
First, though, a word about the production team. The following is from the Reference Recordings Web site: “Since 1976, The Best Seat in the House. Always at the forefront of technical advances. Reference Recordings records and manufactures award winning, ultimate quality CDs, Hybrid SACDs, Reference Mastercuts LPs, and revolutionary HRx discs: 176.4 kHz/24 bit music on DVD audio discs. Our recordings are also offered as digital downloads through our own website and through multiple sites worldwide, including high resolution PCM downloads and both stereo and surround-sound DSD downloads. We offer recordings from many of the finest classical, jazz, blues and world music artists.” At the time, Maestro Kojian (1935-1993) was the director of the Utah Symphony, and Reference Recordings was doing a number of albums with the Utah ensemble.
In the present case, they gave us the Symphonie fantastique by Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), a revolutionary piece of music the composer wrote in 1830 and subtitled “Fantastical Symphony: Episode in the Life of an Artist…in Five Sections.” Using programmatic elements and a huge orchestra of well over a hundred players (I’ve read that Berlioz employed about 130 musicians for the première), the result must have been extraordinary. Nevertheless, it’s not really a traditional symphony; it’s more like a big tone poem, a psychodrama in five movements, wherein the young Berlioz writes autobiographically of the hopeless love of a young man for a woman, with the young man falling into a drug-induced dream, which the composer describes in his music. The woman reappears throughout the music in the form of an idée fixe, a “fixed idea” that the young man cannot shake, a musical innovation Berlioz used to advantage and that later composers like Richard Wagner used extensively.
Berlioz titled the opening movement “Reveries--Passions,” describing the dejected romantic lover of the score conjuring up opium dreams and nightmares of his lost love. Of course, as small tone poems each of the movements should be presented with enough color for us easily to “see” in our mind’s eye the action and emotions the composer intended. In the first segment, the Maestro Kojian is marginally successful, although perhaps a tad too casual for my taste.
The second movement, “Un bal,” describes a ball in which the young man catches a flash of his beloved, music that courses with exquisite dance-like rhythms and textures. Maestro Kojian seems more expressive here than he did in the first movement, and the ball progresses with a comfortable flow.
In the third movement we have a “Scene aux champs,” a scene in the country, which is a long, slow adagio. In it, the young man sees a pair of shepherds playing a pipe melody to call their flock, and all is well until, as always, the young man notices his love in the picture, and the music takes a sudden turn. Until the turning point, the mood is languid, dreamy, which Kojian handles well. It’s the dramatic midsection that perhaps the conductor could have been a bit more colorful and compelling.
By the fourth and fifth movements we get into audiophile territory, with the entire orchestra going full tilt. If you need something to show off your new stereo rig, these movements are among the demonstration pieces for knocking socks off.
The fourth movement, the “March to the Scaffold,” brings the young man to a vision of his death for the murder of his beloved. The movement, incidentally, brings up an interesting question. Should the conductor take it seriously or as a cartoonish joke? A lot of conductors seem to consider it a bit of whimsy, having the character in the score stride jauntily up to his death. Others, like Sir Thomas Beecham (EMI/Warner), see the movement as a more somber affair. Kojian takes a sort of middle course, the music never really sounding too silly or too grim. Yet it never really seems to catch fire, either.
In the finale, the “Witches’ Sabbath,” we find the poor hero imagining his fate at Judgment Day in hell. In some hands, like those of Sir Colin Davis and Leonard Bernstein, the movement can sound undeniably demonic. Maestro Kojian does his best to raise the devil, and Reference Recordings’ wide-ranging sound fills in any missing momentum.
On a final note of interest, the record producers provide two versions of the final movement, one with orchestral bells and one with church bells. I preferred the orchestral bells, which sound splendid.
Producers Jeffrey Kaufmann, J. Tamblyn Henderson, and Marcia Martin and engineer Keith O. Johnson recorded the music at Symphony Hall, Salt Lake City, Utah in March 1982. Because the music has an exceptionally wide dynamic range, it begins very softly. I would advise against turning up the volume, however, as the loud passages can be very loud, indeed. Anyway, the sound is typical of Reference Recordings’ discs. It aims to capture the acoustics of the concert hall, so there’s a touch of resonance, a modest distance to the orchestra, as well as depth to it, plenty of impact and frequency range, and a maximum of realism. Of the dozen or so recordings of this music I had on hand, this one was at the top of the list for sound quality.
JJP
To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:
By John J. Puccio
Maestro Varujan Kojian and the Utah Symphony recorded this album for Reference Recordings in 1982, and somehow it escaped my attention for some forty years. This despite my having reviewed most other Reference Recordings releases over the years and despite the high praise the disc received for its sound in particular. So now, four decades late, here is my review.
First, though, a word about the production team. The following is from the Reference Recordings Web site: “Since 1976, The Best Seat in the House. Always at the forefront of technical advances. Reference Recordings records and manufactures award winning, ultimate quality CDs, Hybrid SACDs, Reference Mastercuts LPs, and revolutionary HRx discs: 176.4 kHz/24 bit music on DVD audio discs. Our recordings are also offered as digital downloads through our own website and through multiple sites worldwide, including high resolution PCM downloads and both stereo and surround-sound DSD downloads. We offer recordings from many of the finest classical, jazz, blues and world music artists.” At the time, Maestro Kojian (1935-1993) was the director of the Utah Symphony, and Reference Recordings was doing a number of albums with the Utah ensemble.
In the present case, they gave us the Symphonie fantastique by Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), a revolutionary piece of music the composer wrote in 1830 and subtitled “Fantastical Symphony: Episode in the Life of an Artist…in Five Sections.” Using programmatic elements and a huge orchestra of well over a hundred players (I’ve read that Berlioz employed about 130 musicians for the première), the result must have been extraordinary. Nevertheless, it’s not really a traditional symphony; it’s more like a big tone poem, a psychodrama in five movements, wherein the young Berlioz writes autobiographically of the hopeless love of a young man for a woman, with the young man falling into a drug-induced dream, which the composer describes in his music. The woman reappears throughout the music in the form of an idée fixe, a “fixed idea” that the young man cannot shake, a musical innovation Berlioz used to advantage and that later composers like Richard Wagner used extensively.
The second movement, “Un bal,” describes a ball in which the young man catches a flash of his beloved, music that courses with exquisite dance-like rhythms and textures. Maestro Kojian seems more expressive here than he did in the first movement, and the ball progresses with a comfortable flow.
In the third movement we have a “Scene aux champs,” a scene in the country, which is a long, slow adagio. In it, the young man sees a pair of shepherds playing a pipe melody to call their flock, and all is well until, as always, the young man notices his love in the picture, and the music takes a sudden turn. Until the turning point, the mood is languid, dreamy, which Kojian handles well. It’s the dramatic midsection that perhaps the conductor could have been a bit more colorful and compelling.
By the fourth and fifth movements we get into audiophile territory, with the entire orchestra going full tilt. If you need something to show off your new stereo rig, these movements are among the demonstration pieces for knocking socks off.
The fourth movement, the “March to the Scaffold,” brings the young man to a vision of his death for the murder of his beloved. The movement, incidentally, brings up an interesting question. Should the conductor take it seriously or as a cartoonish joke? A lot of conductors seem to consider it a bit of whimsy, having the character in the score stride jauntily up to his death. Others, like Sir Thomas Beecham (EMI/Warner), see the movement as a more somber affair. Kojian takes a sort of middle course, the music never really sounding too silly or too grim. Yet it never really seems to catch fire, either.
In the finale, the “Witches’ Sabbath,” we find the poor hero imagining his fate at Judgment Day in hell. In some hands, like those of Sir Colin Davis and Leonard Bernstein, the movement can sound undeniably demonic. Maestro Kojian does his best to raise the devil, and Reference Recordings’ wide-ranging sound fills in any missing momentum.
On a final note of interest, the record producers provide two versions of the final movement, one with orchestral bells and one with church bells. I preferred the orchestral bells, which sound splendid.
Producers Jeffrey Kaufmann, J. Tamblyn Henderson, and Marcia Martin and engineer Keith O. Johnson recorded the music at Symphony Hall, Salt Lake City, Utah in March 1982. Because the music has an exceptionally wide dynamic range, it begins very softly. I would advise against turning up the volume, however, as the loud passages can be very loud, indeed. Anyway, the sound is typical of Reference Recordings’ discs. It aims to capture the acoustics of the concert hall, so there’s a touch of resonance, a modest distance to the orchestra, as well as depth to it, plenty of impact and frequency range, and a maximum of realism. Of the dozen or so recordings of this music I had on hand, this one was at the top of the list for sound quality.
JJP
To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:
