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It is interesting: in NY’s concert I picked the NPoR’s recording of Pathetique issued by DELOS DE-3379. I never seen this CD anywhere (it is too new – 2007 February) and it is not even listed in Delos catalog. If you were fool enough to miss the NPoR’s live play during their US tour then the CD would be a good illustration what NPoR could do. At least it was what I thought…

The CD was recorded by SVIP Studio in Moscow. The CD has a long list of the microphones (Neumann, Schoeps, Holophones and many CCMs), cables (Monster Prolink), preamps (many Milenia), mixing consoles (Euphonix System 5),  A/D converters (Prism) used. I read all this and had a feeling that it should be relay bad as my experience indicates that usually this type of  enumerations of recording equipment on the CD cover leads to very barbaric sound. It is not necessary the problem of the equipment but rather the human factor as the people who need to bravado with all this crap usually have very specific vision about Sound. Then they said on the cover that the recording was mixed not in the recording location but in the SVIP Studio. Furthermore the responsibility for the mixing was not the job of Spivakov the Conductor but by “Surround Mix Engineer” Tatiana Vinnitskay. Well, the hoodlums recorded the NPoR on their dozen channels and then some kind of moron-electricians decided how to mix the orchestra! I should be real crap I figured…

I’m not home now, and I did not play it on my home installation - I listed the CD only in my car. The sound on this CD is really foolish. First off all it is too good to be true but the CD has flipped right and left channels, unless Vladimir Spivakov pit his first violin section on right. There is another possibility that the morons who made my car switched the channels but it is height unlikely. I very seldom play nowadays CDs in my car but the FM does set in my car the correct location of right and left channel. Still, even the flipping the cannels is not as big deal as everything else, and this “everything else“ is truly horrible.

The kiddos from SVIP Studio desired to make the recording “effective”, at least in that way in which they understand it in their primitive mind of electricians. So, on the CD, when whole any of the whole NPoR section plays then it sound “straight” but when a lead of the section or any other lead plays its part then it suddenly begins to be artificially enunciated and overly accented. It sounds do boring and so mechanically-predicable that it is vertically impossible to listen the first movement. The NPoR very far from brutal accents and it strings section is very genital and soft. It is not the Ormandy’s  strings section but it in the way of getting there – very lucrative, very stimulation… and very fact form the “whichchchy” tone of BSO that I hate. The NPoR’s lead phrases are very “integrated” and not as absentminded as the SVIP Studio made it on their stupid CD.

I listed the CD twice and I still feel that it is a valuable CD to get a perspective of what NPoR’s could do. In the beginning of the Pathetique’s last movement there is nothing going on from the perspective of the morons-electricians in headphones. The celebrated Tchaikovsky's “Adagio lamentoso” with its violins wide and dark opening and with string/brass build up into fortissimo  is kind of the Bruckner style accordion-sound where the “Surround Mix Engineers” had no chance to show off themselves. Ironically but very much non-accidentally the beginning of the last movement is the best part on that CD what it truly demonstrates the tone of the NPoR orchestra...

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