Kees Bakels and the unusually remote
Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra have already made a major contribution to the not-recorded-often-enough orchestral literature of Russian composer
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov in their BIS rendering of his Piano Concerto featuring the redoubtable
Noriko Ogawa in the solo part. This follow-up, Rimsky-Korsakov: The Snow Maiden, manages to bring together some of more of
Rimsky-Korsakov's great, and some not-so-great, achievements in orchestration while deftly sidestepping the 800-pound gorilla in his bed, Scheherazade, which they have already recorded. While the results are acceptable in some respects, they are not as stunning as in previous instances.
Bakels and the
Malaysian are not wholly to blame for it;
Rimsky-Korsakov's Pan Voyevoda Suite is the weakest of his large orchestral works and was mainly a case of
Rimsky-Korsakov trying to make the best of a bad situation, to salvage the best music from an opera that turned out to be a dud. While the Pan Voyevoda Suite comes off with a certain measure of charm, it is clear that
Bakels is attempting to make something more of it through taking a rather liberal approach to the tempi as marked.
Bakels' reading of Allegretto for the Introduction of Pan Voyevoda is closer to Lento, and transforms a light, and not very substantive, introductory section to a dance into something almost Wagnerian in character.
Rimsky-Korsakov liked
Wagner, but this winds up sounding rather underpowered and becomes tedious.
Unfortunately, this also goes for much of the rest of the disc. The Christmas Eve Suite, one of
Rimsky-Korsakov's most sparkling and innovative orchestral scores, seems the best of the lot, but can't hold a candle to
Igor Golovschin and the
Moscow Symphony Orchestra's fabulous recording of it on Naxos. The Snow Maiden Suite isn't even as well done as Christmas Eve Suite; it is lumbering, uncoordinated, rhythmically rather slack, and most decidedly played too slowly. The recording, too, seems a bit more hastily mixed than in the case of the other BIS recordings made in Kuala Lumpur, as it lacks both presence and brightness and is a little too quiet. Perhaps
Kees Bakels got out of the wrong side of the bed on the day this was made or, as he is running out of
Rimsky-Korsakov orchestral works to record, was in a hurry to move onto another project. For whatever reason, BIS' Rimsky-Korsakov: The Snow Maiden is not up to the standard of the first three discs in this otherwise excellent series.