Bernstein: Complete Sibelius Recordings on DG with Selected works by Elgar and Britten: A Review

Hmm...what great music can I mangle next...

JEAN SIBELIUS
Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 5 & 7
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
Four Sea Interludes
EDWARD ELGAR
Enigma Variations

Vienna Philharmonic (Sibelius)
BBC Symphony Orchestra (Elgar)
Boston Symphony Orchestra (Britten)
Deutsche Grammophon- 474 936-2(CD) Bargain/Mid Price

Towards the end of my recent ill spell and as my energy levels picked up I dug this boxset out for some bedtime listening, and an interesting listen it is. Bernstein originally recorded the four Sibelius symphonies with the New York Philharmonic in the 1960s to some acclaim. This makes it all the more pervese that these performances/remakes from the 1980s and 1990 along with the Elgar and Britten fillers are really, how else can I phrase it, amongst the most irritating & peculiar interpretations I've heard since Olli Mustonen's recordings of the Grieg & Chopin piano concertos.

The Second Symphony receives a brilliantly performed, willfully self indulgent and painfully distended reading which somehow conspired to make me feel more nauseous than I already was in bed. With its unfeasibly broad, tempos, agogic distortions and lack of forward momentum, especially evident in the second and final movements, this really is a peculiar and not especially convincing achievement within the Sibelian discography. I know some people out there really rate this recording of the 2nd as being daringly brave, innovative and idiosyncratic. Sadly they're idiots who can't tell the wood for the trees and need their ears syringed...

This criticism aside, a convincing broad, idiosyncratic and imaginative reading with flexible tempos is not beyond the realms of the possible. By way of contrast, Stokowski's 1964 live recording on BBC Legends is proof that a less self-regarding approach, combined with a more flexible, superior grasp of structure, tempo & score can produce impressive results to the same ends.

Unfortunately, Bernstein's interpretations of Sibelius' fifth and seventh symphoies are almost as bad as his 2nd. Again well played by the Vienna Philharmonic, the effect in both is something similar to the audio equivalent to wading through treacle. Both recordings clock in at just over 5 minutes longer than average performances, nearly 36 for the 5th and around 25 for the 7th! Bernstein's readings, recorded live, are also curiously & inexplicably underpowered, afflicted with indeterminablyponderous tempos and willful phrasing which distort shape and structure limiting the magical electricity, breadth, mystery and majesty of these works.

Given the bizarre quality of these Sibelius remakes, Bernstein's 1990 recording of the 1st Symphony, one of his last before his death, and out of print until this release sticks out like a sore thumb. Its really bloody good, going someway to showing Lenny at his best! Although not unafflicted by Bernstein's idiosyncratic tempos and phrasing, the somewhat distorted first and third movements and somewhat overblown finale spring to mind, this is a well recorded, highly enjoyable, electrifying and brilliant live performance. Lenny's idiosyncracies, for good or bad, actually serve the music here rather than disfiguring it. Although Bernstein doesn't displace the benchmark interpretations of Karajan, Jansons, Collins, or Davis in this great symphony he provides a fascinating high voltage alternative.

As for the fillers... Well, I was prepared to give this notorious recording of the Enigma Variations with the BBC Symphony Orchestra the benefit of the doubt. Then I listened to it. In its favour its slightly better than crap. The maestro in inconclastic mood merrily yanks & slows the entire piece as it suits him. His infamously SLO-MO version of the Nimrod variation has all the the subtlety of a brakedancing bull in a china shop. Intimacy, restraint and dignity obviously didn't feature highly on Lenny's agenda for this recording. It's such a curious and perverse interpretation that after a while listening my growing frustration subsided into laughter at the point of his ridiculous Nimrod variation began. Not good. The other oddity of a filler, Britten's Four Sea Interludes, coming from Bernstein's last concert at Tanglewood fare slightly better for not being so noxiously self indulgent, but are unfortunately distinguished by sloppy playing and erratic tempos.

I wish I could recommended the set for the performance of the superb Sibelius 1st alone, but unlike some of the gushing Lenny fans on Amazon.com and elsewhere, I can't. Brilliant as it is, the rest of this peculiar boxset is just simply too self indulgent for comfort and frankly not good enough. Frustratingly, it hardly shows Lenny in his best light being only recommendable to die-hard Bernstein fans, rich people who like laughing at strange versions of Elgar's music, curious collectors and Sibelians (who like me have a little too much money than sense in these matters) as a curio for their libraries. For reference recordings look elsewhere.

And some technorati tags:
Leonard Bernstein
Sibelius
Elgar
Britten

Underworld:Evolution

After a hiatus due to illness etc I'm back with a review of a film that really annoyed me. Sorry!

Guaranteed to Suck, and not your Blood...

Lets get this straight first off, I didn't think the first Underworld movie was particularly great. Blessed with a labyrinthine & intriguing mythos whilst being unencumbered by mere cinematic contrivances such as a coherent plot and decent acting from the majority of the cast(excepting the brilliant Victor of Bill Nighy), Underworld was something of a curates egg and a bit of a missed opportunity. The original ended with an intriguing sense of forboding which suggested the possibility of the inevitable sequel being, oh I don't know, interesting...

Well here is the sequel, and it is interesting. But not for the right reasons whatsoever. What can I say, the first half an hour exposition and all is okay. The mythos of the first film is slightly fleshed out and re-established whilst introducing us to Markus the remaining Vampire elder who it turns out is a bit of a sentimental type into brotherly love, and yet not a happy bunny being reborn (for want of a better word) as a rather cliched, but generally well realised, Vampire-Batman-Monster-Hybrid-Thing-Bloke. However, from the moment early on when the goodie bloke, played with incredible lameness by Scott Speedman goes to a 24 hour tavern in Czechslovakia/Russia/Crapmoviestan and chokes on the humon food he can no longer eat the movie begins to bomb like a daisycutter in Iraq.

From this point on Underworld: Evolution is I'm afraid quite easily a leading candidate for lamest and most poorly directed hollywood movie of the decade. Doom is utterly brilliant by comparison. The politics and mythos of the original movie give way to a menage a trois of ludicrous, self indulgent, and frankly boring sequences. Why, for instance, are we suddenly in the specifically Crapmoviestan wilderness immediately after the events of the first film ? Why are there 24 hour Crapmoviestan restaurants in the Crapmoviestan countryside ? Why does Beckinsale bring new meaning to the words pretty and dull? Why does everything happen seemingly within 10 minutes walk of the first location, an abandoned mineshaft? Surely the world of Evil Vampires extends to bit more than an abandoned mineshaft, a Crapmoviestan forest, a dirt track, some docks and a CGI monastery in the mountains all within easy walking distance from each other? Do you get the impression this movie doesn't make any sense yet?

The plot, I use the term loosely (much like I suspect the writer and director did), is very crude and linear as it unfolds across a series of set piece videogame like confrontations. At first Markus, the driving force of the plot is strangely sympathetic coming across as a more reasonable almost likeable character when compared with the outright evil of Bill Nighy's Victor. However, the story quickly drops the ball named Markus. Instead of the early promise shades of grey we get a piss-poor Star Warseque character study of sorts. Markus, the Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader to Victor's Darth Sidious, freed from the latter's manipulation decides to become a deluded meglomaniac intent on creating yet another race of super powerful vampire hybrids. Why do all Vamp movies do this? These movies like Blade before it devalue and dilute the power of the Vampire myth. Surely given the powers of the traditional Vampire of legend this obsession with making super-mega vampires is all rather childish exposing the limited imaginations of these filmmakers? As it is poor old Markus bumbles around fulfilling this sketchy masterplan using curiously paraphrased Darth Vaderesque quotes whilst dismembering people, beating up Kate Beckinsale and attempting to kill his father (played by the excellent Derek Jacobi who appears to have wandered in from another far better movie). The big scene between Markus and his father is vaguely remarkable for its daftly perverse reworking of the major Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader confrontations from Empire and Return of the Jedi with a good old fashioned "and now you die!" chucked in for good measure.

Even the much vaunted action scenes don't sit easy or make a lot of sense either. Underworld: Evolution is something of a showcase for excessively lame, protracted fight scenes where super-powered immortal beings have superhuman senses, go in and out of dull, tediously protracted slow-mo and fast-mo moves and yet can't fire guns accurately at point blank and close range whilst being oblivious to people creeping up behind them! How does Kate Beckinsale's character Selene mysteriously become a better shot firing two automatic pistols at once rather than one? Why does she shoot the super-hard Markus at point blank range with a shotgun everywhere except the head where it would decapitate and kill him? Oh no, we can't shoot and kill the big baddy when theres another 15 painful minutes still to go capped off by another painfully inane and logic defying gun battle involving a Werewolf dancing around in the rafters of an abandoned monastery.

In case anybody is unware the film clocks in @ 1hr 45 mins. It feels more like 3 hours. The whole sorry affair doesn't endear itself either by inserting the same inexplicably patronising and repeated flashbacks drawn from the first half hour ramming home the goodie character's special powers just before they use them in a major scene. Was the director conscious that the audience might not be able to follow the plot of his meisterwork due to either/and/or:
(i) having the attention span of a goldfish ?
(ii) a combination of boredom and apathy at the poor excuse for a plot, action and dialogue presented in his film?
(iii) that they might have been laughing and joking at the badness of the movie so much they couldn't concentrate on following the plot?

Now, what did become really obvious as the film painfully progressed was how superfluous the Scott Speedman character was to the, I again use the term loosely, plot. Ok, so my brother's pet Hamster is a more engaging performer and actor. Yet I had to wonder what was the point of his character as the story went on? I think my reservations were shared by the writer and director. For most of the film he either follows Beckinsale around like a puppy dog/sex toy, or spends long streches unconscious/dead because Markus has (considerately for the audience) beaten him into a pulp and shoved a large rusty pipe through his gut. Yay for Markus! Speedman, the heroic super-hard mutant superhybrid thingy from the first movie becomes quite simply a punchbag in Evolution. To add insult to injury, his exponentially obvious redundancy is thrown into the spotlight when Beckinsale with Jacobi's help becomes SUPER VAMPIRE to defeat Markus. The SUPER VAMPIRE that still can't shoot straight either!

Given the blatantly Beckinsale-centric story, and directed by her husband no less, the whole wasted, humourless enterprise smacks of a self indulgent vanity project come pantomine. Aeon Flux by comparison isn't a perfect or an especially good film either, but it is by no means the insultingly patronising, wasted opportunity of a film Underworld: Evolution is...



Underworld:Evolution

Vampires