Tchaikovsky's Symphonies – Selected
Tchaikovsky Symphonies Nos 4, 5 and 6
The Gramophone Choice
Symphonies Nos 4-6
Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra / Evgeny Mravinsky
DG 477 5911GOR2 (129' · ADD) Recorded 1960. Buy from Amazon
These recordings are landmarks not just of Tchaikovsky interpretation but of recorded orchestral performances in general. The Leningrad Philharmonic play like a wild stallion only just held in check by the willpower of its master. Every smallest movement is placed with fierce pride; at any moment it may break into such a frenzied gallop that you hardly know whether to feel exhilarated or terrified. The whipping up of excitement towards the fateful outbursts in Symphony No 4 is astonishing – not just for the discipline of the stringendos themselves, but for the pull of psychological forces within them. Symphony No 5 is also mercilessly driven, and pre-echoes of Shostakovian hysteria are particularly strong in the coda’s knife-edge of triumph and despair. No less powerfully evoked is the stricken tragedy of the Pathétique. Rarely, if ever, can the prodigious rhythmical inventiveness of these scores have been so brilliantly demonstrated.
The fanatical discipline isn’t something one would want to see casually emulated but it’s applied in a way which sees far into the soul of the music and never violates its spirit. Strictly speaking there’s no real comparison with Mariss Jansons’s Chandos issues, despite the fact that Jansons had for long been Mravinsky’s assistant in Leningrad. His approach is warmer, less detailed, more classical, and in its way very satisfying. Not surprisingly, there are deeper perspectives in the Chandos recordings, but DG’s refurbishing has been most successful, enhancing the immediacy of sound so appropriate to the lacerating intensity of the interpretations.
Additional Recommendations
Symphony No 1, ‘Winter Daydreams’
Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra / Mariss Jansons
Chandos CHAN8402 (44' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
Symphony No 2, ‘Little Russian’. Capriccio italien
Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra / Mariss Jansons
Chandos CHAN8460 (48' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
The composer gave the First Symphony the title Winter Daydreams, and also named the first two movements. The opening Allegro tranquillo he subtitled ‘Dreams of a winter journey’, while the Adagio bears the inscription ‘Land of desolation, land of mists’. A Scherzo and finale round off a conventional four-movement symphonic structure. In the slow movement Jansons inspires a performance of expressive warmth and tenderness, while the Scherzo is managed with great delicacy and sensitivity. Both the opening movement and finale are invested with vigour and passion, and everywhere the orchestral playing is marvellously confident and disciplined.
Jansons also has the full measure of the Second Symphony. It’s a direct performance – the first movement allegro is relatively steady but never sounds too slow, because of crisp rhythmic pointing – and the second movement goes for charm and felicity of colour. The finale is properly exuberant, with the secondary theme full of character, and there’s a fine surge of adrenalin at the end. The Capriccio italien, a holiday piece in which the composer set out to be entertaining, is also played with great flair and the hint of vulgarity in the Neapolitan tune isn’t shirked. Again the closing pages produce a sudden spurt of excitement which is particularly satisfying. The recording here is just short of Chandos’s finest – the massed violins could be sweeter on top – but the hall resonance is right for this music.
Symphonies Nos 1, ‘Winter Daydreams’, and 6, ‘Pathétique’
London Philharmonic Orchestra / Vladimir Jurowski
LPO LPO0039 (89’ · DDD) Recorded live 2008. Buy from Amazon
Of the two performances, it’s that of Winter Daydreams which conveys the greater imaginative spark and spontaneity. Jurowski steers a marvellously lithe and clear-sighted course through this youthful canvas, with springy bass-lines, luminous textures and bracing contrapuntal vigour the keynotes (the antiphonally divided first and second fiddles are a boon, as is the LPO’s personable woodwind roster). There’s genuine affection, too, nowhere more evident than in the third movement’s radiant Trio melody which is allowed to blossom fully yet with no unwanted loss of momentum. The finale can sometimes outstay its welcome, but not here.
Jurowski’s Pathétique, too, has much to commend it, not least a keen sense of architecture, scrupulous observation and total eschewal of histrionics. Everything is exquisitely nuanced, and Jurowski exploits an intrepidly wide range of dynamic, but his tasteful handling of the great second subject only intermittently tugs at the heart-strings. The orchestral playing positively sizzles in the first movement development (which goes off like a rocket) but tends to a steely, excitable slickness towards the end of the Scherzo. The towering finale is strong, thoughtful and full of freshly minted detail but it’s not, in all honesty, terribly moving. Hugely impressive in parts, then, but this LPO release merits immediate investigation for the First Symphony alone.
Symphony No 2, ‘Little Russian’. Festival Overture on the Danish National Hymn, Op 15. The Storm, Op 76. Overture in F
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Neeme Järvi
BIS BIS-SACD1418 (72’ · DDD/DSD) Buy from Amazon
The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, under their longtime music director Neeme Järvi, give an outstanding performance of the Little Russian Symphony, beautifully played and paced, and immaculately recorded, though it lacks a little on felicitous detail.
Järvi’s flowing tempo for the long opening Andante is reassuring and his free expressiveness is most persuasive, the crisp attack of the Allegro, with its Ukrainian themes, bringing echoes of Tchaikovsky’s ballet music. Though the Andantino marziale is on the brisk side, the rhythmic lift again is most persuasive. The Scherzo is fresh and light, and the opening of the finale has ample weight to contrast with the lightness of the second subject, its cross-rhythms suggesting Cuban rhythms. The way Järvi presses forward as the climaxes build adds to the excitement.
Three overtures complete the programme. That inspired by Ostrovsky’s play The Storm is by far the most inspired and is given a powerful performance. The Overture in F is a student work whose deft orchestration points to the mature Tchaikovsky while the one on the Danish national anthem suffers from its relatively uninteresting theme. It’s not nearly as striking as the Russian national anthem, with which it is entwined – rather as the Marseillaise is in the 1812. Tchaikovsky thought it a much more successful piece though it is hard to justify the pompous final repeat of the Danish theme, fortissimo, even in a performance as well judged as Järvi’s.
Symphony No 3, ‘Polish’. Serenade for Nikolai Rubinstein’s Name Day. Eugene Onegin – Waltz; Polonaise. The Voyevoda, Op 3 – Entr’acte; Dance of the Chambermaids. Dmitri the Pretender and Vassily Shuisky – Act I, Introduction; Mazurka
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Neeme Järvi
BIS BIS-SACD1468 (77’ · DDD/DSD) Buy from Amazon
Neeme Järvi’s understated cycle of the Tchaikovsky symphonies has certainly accentuated the innate classicism of this music and, within that, its need to dance. What really excites this performance of the Polish is an approach to rhythm and articulation which keeps the textures open (the BIS sound engineers of course play their part in this) and the phrasing fluid.
Järvi’s reading of the symphony may sometimes lack temperament and that last degree of swagger but at tempi that would indeed keep Tchaikovsky’s imaginary dancers on their toes it exhibits great vitality and, more importantly, an abiding warmth and affection for what one can safely say is Tchaikovsky’s most lyric symphonic creation. The middle movements especially repay Järvi’s lightness of touch, spontaneous and luminous.
We remain ‘on stage’ for the rest of the disc – a selection of sweetmeats from Tchaikovsky’s theatre music, familiar or not, incidental or otherwise. The most interesting morsels come from the ‘dramatic chronicle’ Dmitri the Pretender and Vassily Shuisky: a darkly contemplative and fleetingly tormented Introduction and a rather graceful Mazurka.
But the most touching item has to be the tiny Serenade that Tchaikovsky wrote for the name day of his friend and champion Nikolai Rubinstein, the man who first conducted the Third Symphony. It’s amazing what can be revealed in three minutes and in this very personal charmer we graduate from wistful introspection to hymnic admiration in less time than it takes to realise that Tchaikovsky has fleetingly and so very discreetly opened his heart to his friend.
Symphonies – No 4, Op 36; No 5, Op 64
London Philharmonic Orchestra / Vladimir Jurowski
LPO LPO0064 (85’ • DDD) Recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall, London, March 19 and May 4, 2011. Buy from Amazon
The moment immediately following the arresting horn and trumpet fanfares at the start of the Fourth Symphony reveals a big and consoling string chord – a complete change of mood and ambience. I don’t think I have ever heard it sound so telling, so personal, so heart-easing, as it does in this live Vladimir Jurowski performance from the Royal Festival Hall in London. Indeed, both these performances exemplify what makes Jurowski’s approach to Tchaikovsky so special.
The tension between the classical and the romantic is at the heart of things – and so the restless first subject of the first movement of the Fourth combines a formal elegance with personal disquiet. The second group then achieves a ghostly remove with its hypnotic tailpiece only partly bringing us back to reality with the first subject echoing in the woodwinds. The development of this first movement is very ‘live’, furiously impulsive, with that first subject exacting a terrible insistence until the electrifying moment in the coda – thrillingly brought off by Jurowski – where it spills over into a hair-raising tremolando in the violins.
On balance I would say that the Fourth is the more immediate and exciting of the two performances, with a simple but gravely beautiful account of the second-movement Canzona giving it a real centre. Again, that personal disquiet is tellingly offset by the imposing and very ‘public’ dignity at the climax. More songfulness but folksier in the finale, of course, which is indeed con fuoco. Sparks fly.
The Fifth Symphony is marked by an unerring sense of pace, of just the ‘right’ tempo. In marked contrast to the Mravinsky school of Tchaikovsky interpretation, rubato is only applied where the music asks for it and where it is integral to the phrasing. In a tightly controlled first movement there is fierce intensity in those brassy tattoos.
Jurowski’s account of the slow movement is marvellous, the depth of the string chording at the outset immediately suggesting the darkness within but then beautifully lightened by the arrival of serenity with the solo horn. The playing throughout this movement (and indeed throughout both these performances) is marked by a oneness with Jurowski’s vision and, it goes without saying, a now well-established empathy between the players of the London Philharmonic and their principal conductor. The climactic return of the big sweeping second theme has a glorious ‘in the moment’ abandon and suddenly you are in that live performance. It’s the same with the dramatic sprint into the Allegro vivaceof the finale, violins really bearing down with the heels of their bows. The resounding cheers at the close of the Fifth but not the Fourth suggest a retake or ‘patch’ of the coda of the latter. If so, it doesn’t show, though the close of the Fifth (with Jurowski pointedly not paying too much heed to the meno mosso marking in the horns and then trumpets) carries a very tangible sense of rising to the occasion.
Symphony No 4
Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra / Mariss Jansons
Chandos CHAN8361 (42' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
A high emotional charge runs through Jansons’s performance of the Fourth, yet this rarely seems to be an end in itself. There’s always a balancing concern for the superb craftsmanship of Tchaikovsky’s writing: the shapeliness of the phrasing; the superb orchestration, scintillating and subtle by turns; and most of all Tchaikovsky’s marvellous sense of dramatic pace. Rarely has the first movement possessed such a strong sense of tragic inevitability, or the return of the ‘fate’ theme in the finale sounded so logical. The playing of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra is first-rate: there are some gorgeous woodwind solos and the brass achieve a truly Tchaikovskian intensity. Recordings are excellent.
Symphony No 5
Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra / Mariss Jansons
Chandos CHAN8351 (43' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
With speeds which are fast but never breathless and with the most vivid recording imaginable, this is as exciting an account as we have had of this symphony. In no way does this performance suggest anything but a metropolitan orchestra, and Jansons keeps reminding one of his background in Leningrad in the great years of Mravinsky and the Philharmonic. Nowhere does the link with Mravinsky emerge more clearly than in the finale, where he adopts a tempo very nearly as hectic as Mravinsky’s on his classic DG recording. In the first movement he resists any temptation to linger, prefering to press the music on, and the result sounds totally idiomatic. In the slow movement Jansons again prefers a steady tempo but treats the second theme with delicate rubato and builds the climaxes steadily, not rushing his fences, building the final one even bigger than the first. In the finale it’s striking that he follows Tchaikovsky’s notated slowings rather than allowing extra rallentandos – the bravura of the performance finds its natural culmination.
The Oslo string ensemble is fresh, bright and superbly disciplined, while the wind soloists are generally excellent. The Chandos sound is very specific and well focused despite a warm reverberation, real-sounding and three-dimensional with more clarity in tuttis than the rivals.
Symphony No 5. Romeo and Juliet
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Daniele Gatti
Harmonia Mundi HMU90 7381 (66' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
In Daniele Gatti’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth the detail of the wind scoring is continually and vividly revealed, helped by some superb playing from the RPO’s soloists. Tempi are close to the composer’s metronome markings, somewhat faster than usually heard. The result in the first movement is invigorating, the forward thrust carrying from beginning to end. The primary secondary theme is graceful and romantic, rather than ardently passionate in a Slavic manner. The great climaxes of the slow movement are spacious but not viscerally overwhelming, and the powerful interruptions of the motto theme are less theatrical than usual. The Abbey Road recording is first class, full-bodied, with resplendent brass, and glowing woodwind and horns. Perhaps the massed violins lack a little weight but the overall sonority has the necessary depth and amplitude for Tchaikovsky.
Gatti’s acount of Romeo and Juliet is superbly characterised. It opens chillingly, then introduces the great love theme very gently, followed by the most delicate moonlight sequence. The central climax, with the reintroduction of the Friar Lawrence theme, is terrific, and the love theme blooms gloriously in a great curving sweep of violins. What more can you ask?
Symphony No 5, Op 64. Francesca da Rimini, Op 32
Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela / Gustavo Dudamel
DG 477 8022GH (74’ · DDD) Recorded live 2008. Buy from Amazon
A sinewy, uninhibited Tchaikovsky Fifth – you’d expect nothing less from this source. Dudamel and his young players feed on one another; the exchange of energy is extraordinary. Tchaikovsky’s impulsive changes of tempo feel more naturally impetuous while the phrasing is directly reflected in the sound: just listen to the yearning second theme of the Allegro con anima and the way that the sheen on the violin sound intensifies with the release.
But as with their famous Prom of 2007, it’s not just the fireworks but the inwardness of this performance that brings the biggest surprises. The great Andante cantabile horn theme (so soft and consoling) emerges almost imperceptibly from the somnolent harmonies of the lower strings at the start of the movement. It’s like discovering Romeo and Juliet before the unwelcome dawn – the atmosphere is extraordinarily charged. And what sweep the Simón Bolívar string players lend the second theme, not least in the climactic return. As for the finale – well, there’s nothing like headstrong youngsters to reignite an old favourite: the Allegro vivace comes off the starting-blocks at such a blistering pace as to register a nanosecond of disbelief that such a tempo is even possible.
But the real disbelief is still to come. To better this account of Francesca da Rimini you need to go back to Stokowski or Bernstein. As if the descent into Dante’s inferno isn’t intense enough – Dudamel’s pacing of this lengthy introduction is quite masterly – the whirlwind at its core glows white hot with astonishing virtuosity displayed from every department. And though Dudamel’s rubato in the string-led approach to the climax may not be as abandoned as Bernstein’s, it’s still pretty brave. Hearing is believing in the coda as the trombones and trumpets tumble into the abyss. Exciting? Deliriously so.
Symphony No 6. Marche slave, Op 31. The Seasons, Op 37ba. Six morceaux composés sur un seul thème, Op 21a. The Sleeping Beauty (arr Pletnev) – excerpts
Russian National Orchestra / Mikhail Pletnev pf
Virgin Classics 561636-2 (138‘ · DDD) Buy from Amazon
There’s no denying that Russian orchestras bring a special intensity to Tchaikovsky, and to this symphony in particular. But, in the past, we have had to contend with lethal, vibrato-laden brass and variable Soviet engineering. Not any more. Pianist Mikhail Pletnev formed this orchestra in 1990 from the front ranks of the major Soviet orchestras, and the result here is now regarded as a classic. The brass still retain their penetrating power, and an extraordinary richness and solemnity before the symphony’s coda; the woodwind make a very melancholy choir; and the strings possess not only the agility to cope with Pletnev’s aptly death-defying speed for the third movement march, but beauty of tone for Tchaikovsky’s yearning cantabiles. Pletnev exerts the same control over his players as he does over his fingers, to superb effect. The dynamic range is huge and comfortably reproduced with clarity, natural perspectives, a sense of instruments playing in a believable acoustic space, and a necessarily higher volume setting than usual. Marche slave’s final blaze of triumph, in the circumstances, seems apt.
Pletnev finds colours and depths in The Seasons that few others have found even intermittently. Schumann is revealed as a major influence, not only on the outward features of the style but on the whole expressive mood and manner. And as a display of pianism the whole set is outstanding, all the more so because his brilliance isn’t purely egotistic. Even when he does something unmarked – like attaching the hunting fanfares of ‘September’ to the final unison of ‘August’ – he’s so persuasive that you could believe that this is somehow inherent in the material. This is all exceptional playing, and the recording is ideally attuned to all its moods and colours.
Symphony No 6. Romeo and Juliet – Fantasy Overture
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons
Orfeo C832 101A (65’ · DDD) Recorded live 2009, 2010. Buy from Amazon
Captured live at Symphony Hall, this Pathétique receives a deeply felt interpretation as painstakingly prepared as it is beautifully proportioned. Right from the outset, one cannot fail to be struck by the healthy sheen, tasteful refinement and infectious temperament displayed by the Birmingham orchestra (which can, it seems, boast an exceptionally eloquent woodwind roster these days). Moreover, its gifted Latvian chief indulges in no eccentricities of tempo, moulds melodic lines with flexibility and imagination, and uncovers plenty of ear-pricking detail along the journey.
The first movement unfolds with effortless naturalness, the sublime second subject emerging a little aloofly perhaps, though at the same time I should stress that Nelsons is not afraid to cut loose when the music demands it. The Scherzo eschews flashy thrills and spills in favour of some delightful rhythmic interplay and a thrilling sense of mounting excitement. Likewise, the second movement is an absolute joy, while the finale is both noble and strong, with no trace of maudlin self-pity.
A Pathétique of conspicuous distinction, then, and it’s preceded by a comparably winning account of Romeo and Juliet. No complaints about Orfeo’s ‘take you there’ sound either.
