Orchestra's ascendant Strauss slumps in a muddled recording

Dutoit performances, in particular, require a full sound picture to reveal their worth: Though some conductors concentrate the music's meaning into nuanced shaping of individual phrases, Dutoit presents a phrase as just one element in a clean, clear cross section of orchestral sound. When the sound is obscured, a significant interpretive element is lacking. Missed notes - inevitable in live performances - loom more glaringly.

In not-for-quotation conversations, various experts portrayed the orchestra as being powerless over what happens to its sound files once they leave the distributor, since Amazon, Rhapsody, et al., encode and compress the files according to their own specifications. The lesson from the London Symphony Orchestra is that some acts of compression are more flattering than others. Is there artificial reverberation added to London's Alpine? Audiophiles frown upon such practices, but the end product beats Philadelphia's.

The Philadelphia Orchestra needs to insist on its own encoding, allowing for trial and error that may be necessary in music as complex as the Alpine Symphony. Changes may be necessary closer to the source. The excellent-sounding Eschenbach Beethoven symphony recordings were supervised by the Ondine label, which no longer records here. Differences in the current microphone setup couldn't be enumerated by orchestra officials on Wednesday. In any case, improvements are needed. (And are such dull, generic album covers necessary?)

The orchestra's electronic presence has always been crucial. These days, it's a matter of life and death.