Rozhdestvensky captures the acid in the score better than anyone else. But then his style tended to be more abrasive in the 1960s, the decade he recorded this score for the scrappy Melodiya. Jurowsky's Dancing Lesson, No. 7, doesn't have the bite of Rozhdestvensky's, but it doesn't lack color, either, and overall certainly stands up well against the rest of the competition. In that group of competitors we have the very smooth Pletnev, with a reading on Deutsche Grammophon that may be closest in spirit and style to Jurowski's. But Jurowski's is ultimately better, both because his is subtler in his overall treatment of the score and because his orchestra, the supposedly second-tier WDR Symphony Orchestra of Cologne, outclasses Pletnev's Russian National Orchestra. Pletnev, despite certain deficiencies, was my previous favorite in this work.

Ashkenazy might have been the best choice in the past: after all, he had the highly-touted Cleveland Orchestra and delivered a quite incisive reading of the score. Too bad he was sabotaged by sound reproduction that highlighted that damned bass drum almost as though it were a solo instrument in the score. It is difficult to fathom that Decca's engineers let that dreadful taping pass muster.     [Robert Cummings]