My goodness, the record business has gotten to be incestuous! These are adequate performances, at times better than that, recorded live before a mostly quiet audience, licensed from Harmonia Mundi. Casadesus catches the atmosphere of Nevsky’s introduction, and I very much enjoyed the lusty singing of the Latvian State Choir. But “The Battle on the Ice” is let down both by a lack of sheer momentum and by the orchestra’s want of ferocity in the brass. No complaints, though, about Ewa Podles’ lament on the “Field of the Dead”. Similarly, Lieutenant Kijé is okay, nothing shameful, but it’s short on tipsy abandon in the wedding scene and rhythmic exhilaration in the famous Troika. The sonics are very good and quite natural, which may at least partly explain why this disc impresses more as a pleasant night out rather than as a particularly gripping version of either work. It’s not bad at the price, but I can’t help but think how much more fun it would have been to hear Naxos artists like Theodore Kuchar and his Ukrainian orchestra take a whack at Nevsky.
