While on Beethoven break, a little Tchaikovsky

Try Mravinsky's double CD set on DG Originals of symphonies 4, 5, and 6 for very different and exciting performances of these classics. Along with Mravinsky's Shostakovich 8th (recently reissued in great sound for a pittance on Regis) you have the best of a great Russian conductor.

quote:

Originally posted by Oldnslow:
Try Mravinsky's double CD set on DG Originals of symphonies 4, 5, and 6 for very different and exciting performances of these classics. Along with Mravinsky's Shostakovich 8th (recently reissued in great sound for a pittance on Regis) you have the best of a great Russian conductor.

What he said - Mravinsky is one of the few conductors I can pick without fail. These DG recordings are long time favourites, since my Dad had the original vinyl (which somehow found their way into mine)

For a more modern reading, try Mariss Jansons on Chandos

I dug out the Mravinsky Leningrad 4th on vinyl and the Masur Gewandhausorchester Leipzig on cd for comparison.

I remember the Mravinsky as being extremely compelling and full of fire, but its been years since I pulled it off the shelf.

I've attemped the Masur several times, and the playing is beautiful, but somehow it let my mind wander. I hope to do better this time around.

Thanks for prodding me to look through the black stuff :-)

I have a hodge podge picked up on vinyl:

Nr 4 by George Szell / LSO

Nr 5 by Waldimir Fedosejew / USSR Radio Large SO

Nr 6 by Jean Martinon / Vienna Phil

As a novice listener I need to listen again. I have dug them out as a result of this thread - Thanks

Regards
Geoff

quote:

Originally posted by Geoff P:
I have a hodge podge picked up on vinyl:

Nr 4 by George Szell / LSO

Nr 5 by Waldimir Fedosejew / USSR Radio Large SO

Nr 6 by Jean Martinon / Vienna Phil

As a novice listener I need to listen again. I have dug them out as a result of this thread - Thanks

Regards
Geoff

I've never heard Szell do Tchaikovsky. He's one of my all time favorites. Time to hunt on Amazon.

Well, the Tchaikovsky interlude was a bust. I listened to both 4th symphonies, but couldn't get involved.

Beethoven has his hooks in me :-)

More Bach is on the way, that should break the spell. At least after I have given the Liszt Beethoven Symphonies on piano a couple of runs around the block ...

Dear Mike,

When I was young I used to love the Tchaik last three. I never could really get on with the first three. Still cannot.

But somehow they faded for me in my teens. I was discovering lots of new symphonic music from people like Mendelsohnn, Schumannn, and even mozart to put beside the beloved works of my childhood from Beethoven, Schubert, and Haydn, and somehow poor Piotr Illych got pushed out. It seemed over-wraught, and noisier than it need be. Somehow empty in the middle [where its heart should have been], or so I thought.

In any case it had gone for me.

Then I got those three last Symphonies in the amazingly unconventional performances by Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia on LPs in the late 80s, when the music began to seep back into my affections. This of course was finished when my LPs all left in 1991 [to finance the restoration of my first really fine double bass].

This year I have got these three symphonies back - now in the CD releases from the time of the old LPs re-issues.

This music now seems to me in the immensely satisfying performences by Klemperer to have a stature and emotion clout every bit as significant as that of Johannes Brahms.

One thing that Klemperer never does is acclerate into climaxes in this music, and thus the phrases are never crushed out of shape and their significance becomes their great emotional beauty, rather than being over-blown, and their shape and proportion distorted by accelerating pulses.

Strangely Klemperer's times are in many cases within seconds per the movement of the Mravinski set, though it would be hard to conceive of two sets that sounded more different.

I never could get on with the Mravinski recordings of them.

I have sent you an email. If you do not get it please send one to me.

ATB from George

Always thought Tchaikovsky was more modest than Berlioz even if not as Modest as Mussorsky. After all, Tchaikovsky called one of his symphonies Pathetic while Berlioz pronounced his as Fantastic.

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
Always thought Tchaikovsky was more modest than Berlioz even if not as Modest as Mussorsky. After all, Tchaikovsky called one of his symphonies Pathetic while Berlioz pronounced his as Fantastic.

:-)

George, I think Tchaikovsky had lots of heart. I also sort of left him after my early years, coupled with overplaying on my local classical station. But I couldn't think of not having his music in my collection. One of my teachers said that when you're sad, he was sadder, when you're happy, his music was happier. So I won't go along with any Tchaikovsky slagging at all. His music is still vital to me.

No I could not be without Tchaikovsky now. With me for the duration now.

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by soundsreal:
So I won't go along with any Tchaikovsky slagging at all. His music is still vital to me.

Nobody's slagging Tchaikovsky, I just couldn't get into it. That's a personal failing. I've loved his music for decades.

Oh, I wasn't referring to you, Mike. (not everything revolves around you lol). I've read elsewhere by those scholarly types some very derogatory comments on ol Peter. I say "what ev"...
Now Mike, back to you, I'd hardly call that a personal failing. It just didn't do it for you at the time, like Beethoven for me right now- maybe later down the road..

quote:

Originally posted by mikeeschman:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Geoff P:
I have a hodge podge picked up on vinyl:

Nr 4 by George Szell / LSO

As a novice listener I need to listen again. I have dug them out as a result of this thread - Thanks

Regards
Geoff

The Tchaikovsky Fourth was produced by the great John Culshaw in the Kingsway Hall in the early 60s. There's a great story about the Finale. Szell had just put down a great account of it and was on the verge off leaving, but Culshaw thought that he was capable of something more intense yet. So he told Szell, when he came into the control room, that there had been some technical screw up and that he'd have to do it again. At which point, an incandescently angry Szell stormed out and lashed the LSO through a furious performance of the movement.

That single take, unedited, appears on the released disc. It's quite something

But do get the Mravinsky set as well.

Graham

thanks for that, graham, I think I have it, best go do some digging...

Graham...great and interesting information thanks.

I played Mr Szells' forth yesterday and thought it had fire and passion a plenty. Now I know why.

I have also listened to the 'Pathetique' and enjoyed Mr Martinon's version with the Vienna greatly. What a complete contrast from the fourth.

Old Piotr wrote such a gamut of emotions into his music.

I will look up the Marvinskys'

regards
Geoff

The story about Szell and the retake is an interesting anecdote.

Szell was a personally rather difficult man, not liked by his players. When he died he was chief conductor at the Cleveland Orchestra. Not one player attended his funeral in a private capacity. The orchestra was represented by a delegation sent by the committee.

This seems to show in his recordings [in Cleveland and elsewhere] in my view, where his approach is what may be decribed as lacking in warmth on occasion, IMO.

This is not a way to make Tchaikowki's music work, because IMV, the music is esentially all heart.

I find over-wraught performances of the music whip up the excitement at the expense of the heart. Mravinski manages this for me, and the music's essence is diminished as a result IME. It is hard to avoid a performance such as Mravinski gives, impinging - of itself - on the listener in front of the music's essense because of the very intensity of presentation, which I do not think is a fundamental aspect of the music in the first place.

With regard to Szell, he is already a rather intense musician, and anything - such as this retake incident - that adds to this intensity would only made his way even less appealing to me.

The best recording of the Fourth I know of - in that it reflects the warm heartedness of the music ahead of any applied intensity - is that given by Sir John Barbirolli.

But this is not to doubt the significance of Szell or Mravinski, but rather to explain why neither appeal to me, and to do so without a bald cooment that I simply don't like them without explaining why. By explaining, I hope to reduce the risk of my view being taken as some sort of factoid!

ATB from George

So what say you of Ormandy doing Tchaikovsky?

I just had a listen to Tchaikovskys' 'Serenade for Strings', played by Neville Marriner & the Academy of St Martin-in-the-fields.

Lovely delicate music no at all roaring....a pleasure to listen to

regards
Geoff

George, I don't know if you are aware of this, but Klemperer Tchaikovsky Symphonies are fetching $100+ on amazon !!!

Oh, then I got mine cheap [as deleted second hand]. Omly 28 GBP.

The LPs cost about 14 GBP.

Get them if you can.

Email follows.

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by soundsreal:
So what say you of Ormandy doing Tchaikovsky?

Dear soundsreal,

On the UK Ormandy and Stockowski considtently get a fairly bad rap from the critics.

So the records are not easy to get after the first issue.

I simply do not know ...

ATB from George

oh, you brits don't always get it right!
over here mostly high praise, at least for ormandy. that string sound....wonderfully lush.

I've never cared for Ormandy :-)

each to their own, i'd say....
i did laugh, mike, when you mentioned Dr Lonnie Smith, so there is hope for you still....he gave a most blissful performance here last march.