Track Listing

1. Spartacus-Excerpts: Adagio Of Spartacus And Phrygia
2. Spartacus-Excerpts: Variation Of Aegina And Bacchanalia
3. Spartacus-Excerpts: Scene And Dance With Crotala
4. Spartacus-Excerpts: Dance Of Gaditanae And Victory Of Spartacus
5. Gayaneh-Excerpts: Sabre Dance
6. Gayaneh-Excerpts: Aysheh's Awakening And Dance
7. Gayaneh-Excerpts: Lezghinka
8. Gayaneh-Excerpts: Gayaneh's Adagio
9. Gayaneh-Excerpts: Gopak
10. The Seasons, Op. 67: Winter
11. The Seasons, Op. 67: Spring
12. The Seasons, Op. 67: Summer
13. The Seasons, Op. 67: Autumn

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10837 in Music
• Released on: 2000-04-11
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered

Amazon.com
Khachaturian's popular ballet scores benefit from his vigorous leadership and the surprisingly idiomatic playing of the Vienna Philharmonic. All the favorite crowd-pleasers are here, including the Sabre Dance. This pairing of ballet suites was a demonstration disc back in LP days and the engineering is still impressive. For those not on Khachaturian's wave length (he does skate perilously close to kitschy vulgarism), the generous filler is a delight--Ansermet's dynamic account of Glazunov's ballet. Its four movements depict the four seasons in an idiom flavored by Tchaikovsky and Glazunov's teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, and the music's all the more fetching for it. Ansermet sometimes could be a bit too sedate, and his orchestra was never a world-class group, but his conducting is nothing short of vivacious here, and the orchestra, captured in vivid sound, is with him all the way. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews

Spartacus adagio is perfect..
I got this CD for the Adagio from the ballet "Spartacus", which is sublime. It was the basis for the love theme from "Mayerling"-(1968) with Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve, and also used in "The Hudsucker Proxy". I ripped it into my computer so I can listen to it while I work. Some parts of it suggest the final pas de deux of Albrecht and Giselle in the ballet "Giselle." Very lush and romantic.

Aram Khachaturian CD-Vienna Philharmonic
Excellent CD and everything that I expected when I purchased 2 copies. One was for my son who also enjoys this music. Great CD for quiet listening and reflection.

Spartacus/Khachaturian
Portions of this work were used in the BBC Oneden Line in the 1980s. The title had me baffled for years until I checked the reviews. I was surprised and extremely pleased to have the entire version.