Classic Library - Prokofiev: Symphonies No.1/5/etc:Yuri Temirkanov(cond)/St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra

Certainly Gergiev is the most passionate and surely Rozhdestvensky is the most ironic and of course Mravinsky was the most magisterial and the most monumental. But when the question is who the greatest living Russian conductor is, the answer is Yuri Temirkanov. He has the technique to do anything he wants with an orchestra. He has the temperament to get anything he wants out of the score. Best of all, he has the control to surrender and not impose his will on the music. Except a thick and muscle-bound Classical Symphony, Temirkanov is in top form on this Prokofiev disc. His Lieutenant Kiji is sarcastic, sweet, funny, exhilarating, and even touching in its closing bars. And his Symphony No. 5 is everything a Fifth should be: epic, dramatic, lyric, and above all heroic. Temirkanov molds the sonorities into monumental blocks and he shapes the rhythms into massive engines and fuses them into unstoppable structures and irresistible forms. The St. Petersburg Philharmonic plays as well as it ever played for Mravinsky, which is to say, well neigh ideally. RCA's digital sound is absolutely lucid and endlessly deep.