When one thinks musically of the historical figure of Spartacus and the slave rebellion he led against the Roman Empire, especially on this site, the first thing that usually comes to mind is Alex North’s brilliant and monumental score for the 1960 Stanley Kubrick film classic starring Kirk Douglas. But six years before North composed his film score the Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian composed a three hour plus ballet score that told the story of Spartacus in an equally monumental fashion. Spartacus premiered at the Kirov Ballet in 1956 in this original version. The most famous version of Khachaturian’s ballet was, however, the 1968 Bolshoi version choreographed by Yuri Grigorovich. This version, which ran about 30 minutes shorter, was performed to great acclaim during the Bolshoi’s highly successful world tour in the 1970s. The conductor of those performances, Algis Zhuraitis, recorded the complete 3 hour version of the score with the Bolshoi Orchestra during this time and the recording was released in the West on CBS/Melodia as a 4 LP set. A single disc CD of highlights was released by Eurodisc in the 1980s. An inferior, poorly remastered complete version was also released on CDs only in Russia but the sound is severely compressed and shrill. The CBS/Melodia Spartacus was available briefly to members of the Columbia Tape Club in the 1970s and this DSD archived remaster is from that tape source except for about 20 minutes of material that was damaged on the tape. The additional pieces were also DSD archived from a fairly clean CBS pressing from the 1970s. Apart from the ballet Spartacus’ music sounds like it could be a film score from some 1960s Roman epic and the music is colourful and expressive, not to mention truly spectacular throughout. The third act adagio is famous for its use as the signature theme on the British television series “The Onedin Line” and also in the films, “Mayerling” and “The Hudsucker Proxy”. Khachaturian fashioned no less than four ballet concert suites from Spartacus which have received many recordings and are still performed at symphony concerts but this complete version of this truly epic score is well worth a listen.
FLAC:
[Hidden link. Register to see links.]
[Hidden link. Register to see links.]