by Edward Tatnall Canby
Tomita-Pictures at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky). RCA ARD1 0838, CD-4 quadraphonic, $6.38.
Here is that Moog-genius Tomita again, he of the now famous Snowflakes are Dancing, and this time he's unbeatable-at least through side 1. Side 2 gets a bit out of hand and into Moogitis.
The first Tomita album was made up of Moogified works by Debussy and has been a fab semi -pop, semi-classical success. As noted in my recent review, a minority of Debussy lovers (not necessarily Moog haters) will find it much too near the schlock music category and pretty much of a travesty upon Debussy's polished and economical piano music. Even so, Tomita's extraordinary facility with the Moog was plenty clear enough. All he needed was the right music, and definitely not more Debussy. (At their present stage of musical Westernization, the Japanese have not really learned to appreciate the subtleties as between one Western style and another, which is surely understandable. If they perform, say, Faure's Requiem in the style of Tchaikovsky-see recent SQ recording-then Debussy, he of the steely, delicate piano colors, can just as easily get the fulsome, overblown treatment which is now all the rage in Japan. Tomita here merely reflects a legitimate phase of his country's music making.) So-here he has the right music.
The Mussorgsky Pictures is not known from the vague piano original (in several tentative versions) but via Ravel's masterly orchestration, which saw the possibilities for brilliant coloristic drama on a sprawling big scale that the piano version hid. What Ravel's genius for orchestration did to the music, Tomita's for the Moog does again, at moments as superbly as Ravel himself-although alas, not throughout.
Ravel is by far the more disciplined musical architect; Tomita gets wallowed down in his own trick effects, losing the musical tension and continuity that Ravel never for a moment forgot.
Side 1, though, is simply superb because for that long Tomita remains disciplined, as well as imaginative and brilliant. Such amazing and easy sounds, in such excellent CD-4 distribution! Everything from massed strings and organs and brass choirs and just massed Moog, to whole college glee clubs (simulated), an uncanny solo human whistle that makes you turn right around to find its source, and a complementary fat little man (as I see him) who must have been a miniature pot-bellied wres didn't even dare look when the soloists' parts came on and were totally lost. Just embarrassing, I thought.
Not the listeners' fault at all. Columbia asked for it. So now-playing the record where it belongs, in my home, I hear it for the first time. Not bad from any viewpoint; just rather thoroughly American in tone, with its American chorus and very un-German solo voices. Why not? It isn't a piece one can argue about for very long except in terms of mechanical accuracy and rhythmic drive-this one has enough. And it surrounds, with the expected large ambience. It is also cut loud, à la pop.
Probably a shrewd idea, all in all.
Stravinsky: Petrouchka (Complete original version). London Philharmonic, Haitink. Philips 6500 458, stereo, $7.98.
Stravinsky: Firebird (complete). London Symphony, Antal Dorati. Mercury Golden Import SRI 75058, stereo, $6.98.
Here's a fascinating pair of discs on a number of counts. The two early Stravinsky ballet scores, both familiar for many decades in "concert suite" arrangements, are here presented in the considerably longer versions for the actual dancing, with a lot of music that for some listeners will be new and surprising. Also, one of these is Philips' revival of the once -definitive Mercury stereo recordings (following on the definitive monos, also in this series); whereas the other disc is Philips' latest stereo recording, an instructive comparison.
As for the music, both works, as I have noted before, seem much more modern in their complete versions than in the suite format. This is surely because both were characteristically youthful landmarks, ultra-modern and at the same time out of tradition-which was as it should have been. The derived concert suites emphasized the more traditional Romantic -style tunes, especially in Firebird-and the older conductors, for 30 years, went to town on this aspect until both works became staples of normal concert and recorded fare.
But in both, especially in the transitional passages between the major ballet scenes, the ultra-modern sound of c. 1910 was very much in evidence and can be brought forth easily enough today by a so -minded conductor. In Dorati's Mercury Firebird we have the extreme; he seems to go out of his way to de-emphasize the big, old, familiar tunes with fast tempi and studied underplaying-the very tunes which Stokowski and Koussevitsky & Co. wallowed in! The more dissonant and modern transitions Dorati carefully brings out in full modern array. A sort of reverse-prejudice. I like the old tunes, and so surely will you. They are indeed Romantic! And now, in the 70s, it's quite safe to play them with Romantic fervor.
As for Haitink, the solid yet dynamic Dutchman, he hits a perfect mean in his Petrouchka, perhaps a bit on the stolid side in the more hysterical sequences when the puppet Petrouchka is being chased and, later, murdered.
As for sound, the Mercury, which I played first, seemed marvelous to me, just as it was when new. Done, if I remember, with simple two -mike technique, pure as the driven snow. But only seconds of the newer Philips sound and I knew this was a new ballgame altogether. Such an opening-up, a widening-out, a smoothing of rough edges, such a limpid clarity! Enough said. Try for yourself. The art of recording: it's still on the advance.
(Audio magazine, Oct. 1975; Edward Tatnall Canby)
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