Symphony no. 3

"This Third Symphony is for the sweet-toothed. There are alternative versions for the competition is quite wide now. The songs are a revelation and worth the outlay for this new CD alone".

Read review

"Recommended: Earlier this year ... I gave the orchestral recital of music by Strauss, Korngold and Schreker by John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London very strong recommendations ... This new issue of three works by Rachmaninov is of the same high quality. Especially impressive is their account of The Isle of the Dead ... Both for sound engineering and interpretative excellence this is a recording to stand alongside my other favourites from Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic for both the Isle of the Dead and the symphony, and Pletnev and the Russian National Orchestra for the symphony coupled with the Symphonic Dances".

Read review

"Editor's choice - October 2022: it was a typically canny move of Wilson to follow his splendid Hollywood Soundstage with Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 3, premiered in Philadelphia just a couple of years before the earliest films featured on that album: the SoL's distinctive, swooning vintage string sound pays equally rich dividends here, though in what has to be one of the creepiest accounts of Isle of the Dead on record the same players summon such other-worldly glassiness that you'd swear theremins and/or Novachords were involved!".

Read review

"The strings of the BBC Philharmonic may not be able to rival the richness og the Philadelphia strings under the composer ... but they play the big theme in the exposition lovingly".

"Paavo Järvi is no spped merchant, and some might find his performance comparatively tame even if his technical control and formidable sense of logic are never in doubt ... I will certainly be revisiting the fine detailing of Järvi's individualistic Parisian winds, never indulged at the expense og forward momentum".

"Symphonic Dances gets the very best performance, both lithe and lively, with a constant engagement in its febrile character ... Alas, Järvi misses the sultry languor of the early tone poem The Rock ... Nor is he particularly successful with the Third Symphony".

"Finely played and boosting an impressive Concertgebouw-like bloom ... The coupling may also divide opinion ... With or without a little help from the mixing desk, Jurowski ensures that the vocal line is never obscured".

"These are two marvellous orchestral display-pieces, often considered structually flawed, are both played here for the masterpieces they are ... a treasurable disc".

"Vänskä ant the LPO are firing on all cylinders in this invigorating live pairing ... S strongly recommended issue".

"By burying the woodwind counterpoint, Petrenko turns the music's aching beauty into mere prettiness. All in all, a disappointment".

"Nya Rachmaninov-utgåvan är den första i vad som är tänkt att bli en serie med den ryske senromantikern. Huvudnumret är tredje symfonin från 1936 där tonsättaren håller känslorna i stramare tyglar än i den andra ... Wilson bjuder på oerhört flott spel från sin elitorkester och det finns inte mycket att klaga på".

"I have never heard Rachmaninov's imaginative scoring here [in The Isle of the Dead] brought out so vividly, allowing us to appreciate the powerful pictorial imagination of the composer ... It is probably difficult to make such a splash with the Third Symphony but Wilson's approach pays off here too".

"Valery Gergiev's view is dark and stormy, his relatively slow pasing undercut by so many lugubrious inflections that piece loses its overall shape".

"Lan Shui and his singaporean players play their hearts out, without matching the intensity of the composer's 1939 account of the finale, and bring an apt autumnal glow to the lovely second movement in BIS's ideal acoustic".

"Yevgeny Sudbin, clearly on top form, treats Rachmaninov's variations like a set of diabolic virtuoso etudes, displaying transcendental virtuosity and kaleidoscopic keyboard colour ... I was less impressed by conductor Lan Shui's interpretation of the epic and elegiac Third Symphony".