On this showing the Hungarian National Philharmonic are certainly an enthusiastic, even boisterous lot; standards of ensemble and intonation are eminently respectable and they can boast a commendably full-blooded brass section in particular. All well and good, but Tibor Ferenc's plain-spun direction brings with it precious little insight and the somewhat cramped, airless acoustic doesn't help matters either.
This latest Hary Janos starts well enough, with a nicely judged mood of fairy-tale expectancy. But where's that essential ingredient of heart-rending nostalgia in the third movement ''Song'' (Fricsay on DG remains unsurpassed here), the humour as the limping, battle-weary Napoleon surveys the aftermath (a terribly deadpan saxophone solo), or the swagger of the irresistibly rhythmic string-writing in the ''Intermezzo'' (turn instead to Szell and his dazzling Clevelanders on Sony for the genuine, leaping article)? Ferenc launches the final ''Entrance of the Emperor and his Court'' at a fair old lick, but any resulting rise in emotional temperature or genuine excitement is conspicuously absent, I'm afraid.
Not even the present mediocre display can tarnish the delights of the captivatingly inventive ''Theme and Variations'' from Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 3 (which reminds me, isn't it about time Sony and Decca restored to currency their outstanding accounts of this charmer of a work in its entirety under Tilson Thomas—2/79—and Maazel—6/76—respectively?). And as the Janacek Sinfonietta progressed, I found my patience wearing dangerously thin in the face of some increasingly slack playing (witness the fallible winds at the start of the finale) and anonymous conducting. For this piece, however, a suitably invigorating antidote can be found in the form of Kubelik's recently restored Munich account (DG)—a great and inspiring rendering of Janacek's astonishingly vital creation if ever I heard one.'