For all the contrasting characters of the two conductors represented here, this record is from the gentler aspects of Russian romanticism, which is presumably what has dictated the reissue. In Scheherazade, Barbirolli caresses the languorous melody of “The Young Prince and Young Princess”, in the process somewhat over-phrasing the lyrical flow; even the sprightliness of “The Kalender Prince” is a little softened, and though the orchestral playing is colourful – and is elegantly led by John Georgiadis’s violin playing – there is something a little enervating in much of the performance. Rimsky-Korsakov’s score is not free from the sentimental in its approach – indeed, it can be said to make a virtue of that – but there is room for greater vividness.
Arensky’s highly sentimental variations on what is in turn one of Tchaikovsky’s more sentimental songs (the one usually known in English as “Christ had a garden”) adds to these impressions. Evgeni Svetlanov restrains his often highly charged manner for Glazunov’s ballet music, which elevates the pretty into an art-form very much in the style established many years previously in the heyday of the Russian ballet-feerie. Since the choreography was by the then aged Petipa, this was scarcely surprising; but 1899 was getting a little late for Seasons that are so unremittingly polite, the famously mild Russian winter here depicted with gentle snowflakes, refreshing hailstones and nice, soothing frost.'