New York Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez - Ravel: La Valse, Menuet Antique, Mother Goose (2003) [SACD]

Despite having already released Boulez’s La Valse in SACD two-channel stereo, Sony now has opted to put it back in the company of its original LP partners and remaster the whole album in multichannel format. They needn’t have bothered. Your reaction to this effort will depend to some extent on your view of what constitutes “natural” sound, for while the surround experience, well, surrounds you, natural it certainly is not. La Valse comes off best, if only because the very large orchestra allows less-frequent opportunities for obtrusive spot-miking of individual (primarily wind) instruments than in the other two works. Even so, hearing the triangle in the back left channel and the trumpets and cymbals back right provides a disorienting experience, though there’s no denying the increase in sheer sonic brilliance.
Ma Mère l’Oye fairs worst of all. Just listen to the way the breathy flute in “Laideronette” dominates the texture, popping irritatingly in and out of the mix, or to the strange way the xylophone seems bifurcated between the back and front right channels simultaneously. Similarly, in the Menuet antique the first quiet episode lacks textural coherence, with the bassoons sticking out like sore thumbs and string textures shifting seemingly at random from rear to front. It’s a mess. Add to this the sound of pages turning, chairs scraping, and other ambient noises that the multichannel format only exaggerates, and comparison with basic stereo (in this case at least) clearly favors Sony’s original two-channel presentation. Indeed, for only a few dollars more than the price of this disc you can get Boulez’s entire three-CD set of Ravel’s orchestral music in all of its original glory, and that’s still the way to go.