Liadov The Enchanted Lake Op.62 - Svetlanov

Liadov: The Enchanted Lake - Fairy tale picture Op.62

USSR Symphony Orchestra
Evgeny Svetlanov, conductor
Rec. 1970

In "The Enchanted Lake, Op.62", written in 1906, Liadov takes up an episode from the finnish "Kalevala" saga, yet equally responds to the lonely beauty of the lakes of his Russian homeland. "How picturesque, how pure - all those stars and the secrets of the deep! But above all - no people, no entreaties and complaints, only dead Nature, cold, malevolent, but fantastic as a fairy tale."
The score of "The Enchanted Lake" does without trumpets and trombones - the instrumental colors which recall human "entreaties and complaints" are thus absent. Instead, the horns lend forest atmosphere, creating their own dimension in opposition to that of the woodwinds. "One has to feel how much life and change of the colours, the air occur in the incessantly changeable stillness and seeming immobility."