I Don’t Like Gergiev’s Prokofiev
I’m having a hard time with Gergiev’s Prokofiev symphony cycle. I am familiar with Ozawa’s right now, and switching my listening is a bit like dragging my ears down a blackboard. They’re, like, too bloody crisp! That’s something that I never thought would be something to complain about, overcrispness, I find it well hard to 
deal with really old acoustically smudged-up recordings, the modern ten thousand mikes around each instrument approach is just great by me.
There’s something frightening about this though. It’s not even a little bit smudgy. It’s lacking smudginess. It almost sounds like it’s a string quartet. (albeit a string quartet with, you know, a piano and brass and tonnes of thumping percussion) Apparently Prokofiev is Gergiev’s favorite composer, and I suppose I can see how the clinical precision fits with Sergei P’s mechanical, percussive, writing.
But I like my Prokofiev with more of a rushing, gathering of sound, and quicker where it counts! Gergiev seems to flop all over the place in sections which should be a constant, driving tempo.
Maybe I’m just not used to it. It’s hard to switch across to a new interpretation sometimes.
