This is a generous and well-planned concert and it is brilliantly recorded. I am therefore all the more sorry to report that it is very disappointing. Dutoit's performance of the magically evocative Khovanshchina Prelude, which opens the concert is very cool and unatmospheric. A night on the Bare Mountain is well played with plenty of bite from the brass, but like the Russian Easter Festival Overture, which has attractively iridescent detail at the opening, sounds curiously uninvolved and fails to blossom. The performance of the famous orchestral showpiece, Pictures at an Exhibition is even less involving. Dutoit moves steadily through the piece and is best in the music which has strong orchestral colouring, like the ''Unhatched Chickens''. But the finale seems to trundle along, like the Polish ox-cart, and fails to grip the listener.
The Decca recording is very present and vivid, but it lacks the sumptuous qualities of the Telarc CD, which is justly famous for its overwhelming effect at the end. Maazel's characterization, too though not perhaps the most imaginative on record, is far more telling and he and the orchestra seem to be enjoying themselves as well, whereas in Montreal there is no similar projection of enthusiasm.'