Yuri Temirkanov's remarkable six-year tenure with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, which ends in June, will go unrecorded, except in memories.
It's regrettable enough that no money could be found for a commercial recording project. It's even more dispiriting that the BSO couldn't even follow the lead of several other orchestras and release its own self-manufactured CDs, so that at least a sense of the Temirkanov magic could be preserved in a tangible fashion.
As things stand now, the situation will be different for Temirkanov's successor, Marin Alsop, who officially takes the post in 2007. She's already scheduled to record John Corigliano's Red Violin Concerto with the orchestra this June for Sony, and she's talking about a BSO project for Naxos, the budget label for which she has recorded several discs with other orchestras.
Meanwhile, just-released CDs featuring Alsop and those other orchestras, as well as CDs and one DVD featuring Temirkanov with his other orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, provide a sense of the BSO's artistic present and future.
The latest Temirkanov discs, recorded live, make it all too clear what the BSO will be losing, a conductor who can ignite electric music-making in the concert hall, an interpreter who knows his way into the vast, endlessly rewarding realm behind the printed notes of a score.
The material on the recordings -- Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff, Mahler -- also reiterates Temirkanov's comparatively limited range, one that leaves out a great deal of contemporary music. The DVD release contains mostly well-trodden fare, too.
The latest Alsop discs reaffirm at least some of what the BSO will be gaining, especially a conductor whose remarkable inquisitiveness takes her into a richly varied repertoire that she can enlighten to compelling effect. Her performances of music by Kurt Weill, Leonard Bernstein and Mark-Anthony Turnage make potent additions to her discography.
There's also a warhorse item among these releases, Brahms' Symphony No. 2. That it fails to make a strong impression may explain why some people questioned her BSO appointment.
Music directors are invariably measured on how they handle the standard, essential core of orchestral works. Based on the new Brahms disc, along with the one of Brahms' First Symphony released earlier this year -- part of her complete Brahms symphony set for Naxos with the excellent London Philharmonic Orchestra -- Alsop has a way to go in developing the sort of interpretive depth that distinguishes many conductors in such repertoire.
