It is not easy to see the reasoning here. The Sibelius Seventh could surely have been better accommodated alongside, say, the Fourth, which Rozhdestvensky recorded in the 1970s – and very well too! If you want the Glazunov, why encumber it with music that most CD collectors will either already have or won’t want? Be that as it may, there is no playing to the gallery in the Sibelius Seventh, recorded in 1962, which is powerfully conceived and marvellously paced. In reviewing it originally I noted somewhat euphemistically that “the brass are not the most subtle of players” and I have to say that the crude trombone playing divests the climaxes of their majesty and diminishes the performance’s appeal.
Rakastava is beautifully played but the sound is constricted and the transfer does not represent much if any improvement over the 1960s Melodiya originals with which I compared them and much the same holds for the Andante for strings, Op. 50bis, the arrangement Prokofiev made of the slow movement from his First Quartet of 1930. The Glazunov Scenes de Ballet originally appeared in harness with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Antar Symphony. I like the score more than did RO, who spoke of its “generally featureless landscape” and though it is not in the same league as The Seasons, it has moments of real charm. All the same this is an uncompetitive disc, even at mid price, with repertoire thrown together without any discernible logic.'