Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Yamada

Russian Dances

Pentatone

ULTIMATELY – and only eventually – I decided to recommend this collection of Russian dances featuring performances by the respected Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and its principal guest conductor Kazuki Yamada. The absolute core of the repertoire they perform – and it is all very well played indeed – is in fact Glazunov’s two charming, and very little-played Concert Waltzes, Shostakovich’s completely riotous, football-inspired ballet The Golden Age, which is sensationally-played and characterised with the imagery bouncing off the park, and Stravinsky’s outrageous Circus Polka from 1942, “composed for a young elephant”, the animal in fact being a several-ton big wee star at Barnum and Bailey’s Circus. This is all brilliant stuff, superbly performed, with Yamada firmly in command of Shostakovich’s team and nobody sent to the sin bin, and of Stravinsky’s pre-delinquent heffalump, which trumpets Schubert’s Marche Militaire in excitement.

It’s all preceded, however by an interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake Suite which remains resolutely on dry land, doggedly earthbound, and without much sway or flexibility in its triple-time essence, which is pretty wooden in its interpretation. Why on earth do we never hear the other works in concert, I wonder?

Michael Tumelty