Here is yet another major new recording of The Nutcracker. Undoubtedly its great success stems a good deal from the superlative Berlin Philharmonic, but if also confirms Semyon Bychkov as a major new presence on the recording scene. He has the singularly important gift of bringing music to life in the recording studio as at a concert, and every bar of this performance is tingling with vitality. The ''Miniature Overture'' is brisk, crisply accented and played almost like Mozart, but it sets the mood for a First Act which has the liveliness of Mackerras (Telarc) and an even greater sense of drama—the gun shot which opens the battle sequence makes one jump the first time one hears it. Yet I think Mackerras keeps this more convincingly a toy battle. The balance of the Berlin recording helps to increase the sense of drama. Although a concert hall ambience is favoured, the strings seem that bit more forward and inner detail is rather more sharply defined; in climaxes the cymbals clash with a thrillingly metallick bite. The Berlin strings do not suffer from being rather more brightly lit: the effect is not artificial and there is no lack of warmth when they play the gorgeous climbing scalic melody of Clara's journey throught the Pine Forest with the Prince. Similarly, in the famous Act 2 Pas de deux the massed violins have plenty of body to support the passionate intensity of the music's line. Bychkov knows just how to make a romantic tune soar, yet the histrionics are kept in hand. At the brass climax the acoustics provide less sonority than Telarc, but more bite. Earlier Bychkov balances the serenely glowing but essentially pure choral timbre of the Berlin Cathedral trebles in the ''Waltz of the Snowflakes'' against a sparkling orchestral response. In the Divertissement, the orchestra is on superb form. One delights in the sheer style of the ''Spanish Dance''; the deliciously pointed ''Chinese Dance'' and the elegant flutes. Here Mackerras is upstaged—he gets a bright-eyed response from the LSO but less subtlety. Previn (EMI) however is in his element: his fltues are scrumptious and his ''Waltz of the Flowers'' lilts more beguilingly than Bychkov's, though the BPO strings play with great elegance.
Which to choose, if buying only one set, I simply can't advise you. I like the EMI recording rather more than the Philips for its slightly more distanced effect; yet there are moments when the extra vividness of the Philips sound is very telling, I like even more the rich aural glow of the Watford Town Hall resonance on Telarc and the way it makes the lower strings and brass expand, while Mackerras's First Act is particularly successful. But there is an affectionate aura to the RPO/Previn partnership that is seductive, even if the First Act is very relaxed. Tilson Thomas (CBS) offers a fine version too, but I feel a first choice has to be made from the other three. So, I leave it to you—you can't really go wrong with any of them, and for sheer orchestral zest and many perfectly realized touches of detail, the Berlin playing has a special memorability. And there is a sizeable bonus, for the Eugene Onegin excerpts are brilliantly done. The Philips notes are extensive but unlike the Telarc the descriptive comments are matched to the main ballet numbers and not the cues. With Telarc the sub-divisions match the cues; the EMI documentation is inferior to both.'