AND ONE TO AVOID…

Should curiosity tempt you to add The State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR Ministry of Culture’s recording to your collection, resist it. Gennady Rozhdestvensky’s astute, sympathetic conducting isn’t the difficulty. The problem is the soloists (and to some extent the chorus), whose sketchy command of English is distracting, to the point where words are undecipherable. This is one instance where something irreplaceable is lost in translation.