Mendelssohn Orchestral Works (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring

Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 in A minor ‘Scottish’, Op. 56, MWV N18; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61, MWV M13 (excerpts) – No. 1: Scherzo (after Act 1); No. 7: Nocturne (after Act III); No. 9: Wedding March (after Act IV). Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Sergiu Comissiona, conductor. VOX VOX-VX-NX-3046CD

Mendelssohn: The Hebrides in D major ‘Fingal’s Cave’ Op. 26, MWV P7; Symphony No. 4 in A major ‘Italian’, Op. 90, MWV N16; Symphony No. 5 in D major ‘Reformation’, Op. 107, MWV N15. Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Sergiu Comissiona, conductor. VOX VOX-VX-NX-3047CD

 

Many of our readers of a certain age are no doubt familiar with Vox, a budget label that produced some real musical treasures over the years. An example from my own experience is the day back in the mid-1970s when I was strolling through a Sears department store one afternoon and came across an aisle display that featured the newly released 4-LP Vox Box of Ravel’s orchestral music featuring Stanislaw Skrowaczewski conducting the Minnesota Orchestra. I was at the time back in college on the G.I. Bill after serving 4½ years in the Army, with a wife, two kids, a pair of Bose 901s, a rapidly expanding passion for classical music, and a tight budget. When I saw that this box was on sale for something like seven bucks – well, that settled it, I just had to have it. It sounded pretty darn good through the 901s (purchased in Germany with my reenlistment bonus) when I got home, and I found the music of Monsieur Ravel to be utterly captivating. Even though Vox was a budget label, the sound quality on some of their releases could be excellent (the main drawback was the often substandard quality of their vinyl pressings), and this Ravel set, which was recorded by Elite Recordings (engineer Marc Aubort and producer Joanna Nickrenz), had beguiling sound. Those performances and recordings still hold up as you can see from reviews of digital releases from the Ravel set, such as a review from our own John Puccio that you can read here, or an article at the PS Audio website that provides some insight into the recording process, which you can find here. 

Appearing on the back cover of these new “Vox Audiophile Edition” releases is a highlighted statement affirming that “The Elite recordings for VOX by the legendary producers Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz are considered by audiophiles to be amongst the finest sounding examples of orchestral recordings.” For this series of reissues from the Vox catalog, the folks at Naxos have been pulling some of those tapes out from the vaults and carefully preparing these CDs for release, the end product of their labors being what they describe as “new192 kHz / 24-bit ultra high definition transcriptions of the original Elite Recordings analogue master tapes.” We have previously reviewed several releases in this “Audiophile Edition” series originally recorded by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and found them to be excellent, so we were eager to audition these recordings from Baltimore. We have in our collection numerous fine recordings by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under the baton of David Zinman on the Telarc and Argo labels, so we know how good they can sound.

Of course we ought not consider only sound without stopping first to reflect on the most important component of these releases: the music. In these unsettling times, with disturbing developments assaulting our senses and emotions from week to week, day to day, seemingly hour to hour on particularly bad days, how comforting it can be to listen to the music of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847). Mendelssohn was a master of melody; however, by that I do not mean to imply that his music is merely a succession of pretty tunes. It has substance, it has grace, it has style. The late conductor Sergiu Comissiona (1928-2005), who was born in Romania, emigrated to Israel, then later became an American citizen, enjoyed a successful 16-year term at the helm of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, building them into a first-class musical outfit. When you combine the attractive music of Mendelssohn, the solid musicianship of Comissiona and his orchestra, and the excellent sonics provided by the team of Aubort and Nickrenz (transferred to CD by the Naxos engineers), the end result is a pair of CDs capable of making the world seem a better place.