Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances are played with great sharpness here, emphasizing the extraordinary originality of his last completed work and serving as a reminder that the original title was Fantastic Dances: this might be more suitable for a performance that, though not lacking in lyrical grace, sets some familiar characteristics in a novel, strange and even somewhat disquieting context. The waltz of the central movement (once to have been called “Twilight”) has a rhythmic fluency that suggests not so much elegance as a faintly uncertain atmosphere; and there are shadows lying across the urgency of the finale. A fascinating score is intelligently and imaginatively read.
Taras Bulba is also very well played. Here, the problems include unusual instrumental balance but, still more, getting the relationships between the many tempo changes into the right perspective. Gardiner is sensitive to these, without always following the instructions in the score to the letter. For the most part, his reading justifies this, though in the first movement, “The Death of Andri”, the move into the Allegro vivo is not done accelerando but abruptly, three bars early, which seems to go against the nature of the melodic phrases. But this is a small point, and for the rest the performance is admirably detailed and well-judged; and in both works the orchestral playing is of individual virtuosity and clarity.
'