Comparison recordings
Symphony #4:
Chicago SO/Solti. Decca 430 745 2
Chicago SO/Kubelik. [mono] Mercury Living
Presence LP
Baltimore SO/Comissiona. Silverline
[ADD] DVD-A 288229 9
RPO/Rodzinski. Westminster [AAD] MCAD2
9829A
VSOO/Scherchen. [mono ADD] Westminster/Urania
URN22.248
Russian SO/Valery Polyansky. Chandos
CHAN 9608
Symphony #5
LPO/Stokowski. Decca Weekend Classics
[ADD] 438 687 2
Oslo PO/Hegge. RCA Victrola LP
LSO/Monteux. Silverline [ADD] DVD-A
288228 9
LSO/Monteux. Vanguard [ADD] OVC 8031/2
RPO/Rodzinski. Westminster/DGG [mono
ADD] 471 272 2
St. Petersburg PO/Temirkanov RCA/BMG
82876 65831 2
Symphony #6
Chicago SO/Reiner. RCA/BMG [ADD] 09026
61246 2
LSO/Stokowski RCA/BMG 09026-62602-2
[Dolby surround]
RPO/Rodzinski Westminster/DGG [mono
ADD] 471 272 2
BPO/Furtwängler. various issues.
[mono ADD]
I have been including
these recordings in my reviews as comparisons
for some time, but must confess that
while I once owned #’s 5 & 6 on
"Quadraphonic" LP pressings,
I no longer own them and hadn’t heard
them in 20 years. I put Quadraphonic
in quotes because I am advised that
EMI issued a lot of fake (oh, pardon
me, I mean of course "enhanced")
quad sound on LP’s so these recordings
may not be true four channel masters.
They appear here in exquisitely detailed
two channel versions which decode convincingly
in my four channel player yielding an
open orchestral perspective, but not
much hall ambiance. Upon reacquaintance,
#’s 5 and 6 are still brilliant and
exciting in places, perhaps just a little
too slow in others but overall quite
satisfactory.
But in the case of
#4, this EMI recording is completely
new to me and is the fastest performance
I’ve ever heard, so fast that the sense
of the music is utterly lost. If you
want your Tchaikovsky Fourth
beaten to death throughout, this is
the recording for you. The pizzicato
scherzo is played brilliantly it must
be said and for the orchestra to keep
up with such punishing tempi underscores
once again the amazing virtuosity of
the BPO. During the monophonic hi-fi
era the Kubelik and the Scherchen performances
battled it out for supremacy, but only
Scherchen’s has so far appeared on CD.
Comissiona leads a creditable version
in spectacular, if somewhat fiddled-with
sound.
I suppose I must have
been imprinted on the very first stereo
recording, the Rodzinski Westminster
version, since to me it remains fifty
years on as the perfect performance
both in sound and performance. At every
turn the tempi and dramatics are juste,
and the sound excellent in dynamics
and balance. The last movement re-entry
of the fate theme in the trombones still
sounds magnificently terrifying. This
recording has been out of print for
some time, but may still be found at
collector’s shops. (Rodzinski also recorded
#’s 5 and 6 for Westminster, unfortunately
not in stereo, but they are also excellent
performances and technically superb
recordings.) The Polyansky #4 is a creditable
reading in digital sound, but sounds
good only if you haven’t heard the Rodzinski.
And I seem to be the only person on
earth who likes the Rostropovich set
of the complete Tchaikovsky Symphonies
(etc.) on EMI, released on LP in quad
sound but now available on two channel
CD in a bargain box. If you want to
assemble your own perfect performance
of #4 from various disks, Solti and
the CSO have done the finest performance
of the slow movement ever, even just
edging out Rodzinski; so my perfect
Fourth would have Rodzinski for
movements 1,3, and 4 and Solti for #2.
Karajan gets a large goose egg from
me on #4.
The Fifth is
the most difficult to bring off because,
as Taneyev was the first to point out,
it was assembled from sketches for ballet
and operatic music and the seams show.
The long tuneful sections and the brilliant
rhythmic sections go along well with
about everyone, but when the time comes
to shift gears, most conductors have
difficulty and break the mood rather
than accomplish a smooth transition
that maintains tension. Hegge, Monteux,
Rodzinski, and Stokowski carry on the
best at these points. Temirkanov is
the best digital version I know, but
it is so individually shaped a performance,
in the Stokowski mold, that many may
not like it: I didn’t the first time
I heard it. Karajan is brilliantly exciting
in the energetic dramatic parts with
especially fine recording of the brass
and percussion; but in the dramatic
sections Karajan is more just slow rather
than dramatic and it now sounds to me
as if his orchestra is impatient with
these tempi. Overall, the Stokowski
and Monteux are the most satisfactory
performances here and both feature excellent
sound. The prominent appearance of the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra in these
ratings of Tchaikovsky underscores the
importance of the brass ensemble in
Tchaikovsky’s orchestra, but so far
I have not heard any conductor lead
the CSO in a definitive recorded performance
of the Fifth.
The Sixth, Tchaikovsky’s
final complete statement on symphonic
form, one of the most perfectly structured
works he ever wrote, so perfect in fact
that partially in likely despair of
ever achieving this pinnacle again he
committed suicide.* It is an eloquent
presentation of bipolar mood syndrome,
something we all experience to some
degree, with the lowest lows followed
by the highest highs. It ranks with
Beethoven’s Fifth (the supreme
expression of paranoid schizophrenia,
again, something we all experience to
some degree) among the most widely and
intensely appreciated symphonies ever
composed. Over many decades both Stokowski
and Furtwängler have claimed dominion
over this work, but neither ever recorded
a definitive version with exceptional
sound quality. Stokowski’s 1973 LSO
version in analog quad sound is very
good but suffers from occasional loss
of ensemble and loss of focus, and Furtwängler’s
most recommended recording of the work
was made in 1938. To my mind the best
overall version, sound and performance,
is Reiner with the CSO which will hopefully
soon be released in SACD format. Karajan’s
conducting of the dramatic sections
is, as with the Fifth, more just slow
than dramatic, but his performance of
the brighter sections is exceptional,
and his version of the scherzo is the
best I’ve ever heard, both in performance
and sound, even better than Reiner’s.
So, again, to assemble the perfect Sixth,
it’s Reiner for movements 1, 2, and
4, and Karajan for 3.
*One literary critic
said of the final poems of Sylvia Plath,
written just before her suicide, that
from such poems there could be no coming
back. I think Tchaikovsky felt the same
way about this symphony; the expressions
of despair and depression were so intense
that once manifested, there was for
him no coming back. In his recent one-volume
biography of Tchaikovsky David Brown
examines the evidence for the alternative
"court of honor" theory of
Tchaikovsky’s suicide and concludes
that there can be no final proof one
way or the other. However, if the "court
of honor" theory were correct,
there would be no reason Tchaikovsky
couldn’t simply have moved to Paris
where he had many friends who would
have helped him settle and he would
have been beyond the reach of his accusers—assuming,
that is, that he wanted to live.
Tchaikovsky hinted
that there was a secret program to the
Pathétique Symphony that
no one would ever guess, but I think
it is fairly easy to guess. To do so
one must consider as I do that Swan
Lake and Manfred be added
to the canon of Tchaikovsky symphonies,
and both are about the poet who strives
for a greater life, is betrayed, and
seeks and finds death in the last movement.
The Pathétique Symphony
bristles with conflict; in the early
movements, the orchestral sections toss
musical fragments back and forth like
dogs fighting over a bone, and the musical
lines are almost exclusively in contrary
motion. Hence, the first movement of
the Pathétique is the
poet’s violent despair and dialogue
with suicide, and the conclusion is:
yes, probably. The second movement is
the rebuttal: love and friendship make
life worthwhile; but the conclusion
is that love and friendship are never
more than awkward ritual dances and
betrayal and disappointment are inevitable.
The third movement
suggests that the joy of victory and
success, found in company with others,
makes life worthwhile. Tchaikovsky hated
war and his pseudo military marches
are generally ironic and satirical.
The march music in the Fifth Symphony
and in Sleeping Beauty refers
to royal processions or pageants and
not to military victory. Note the similar
use of march tempo music by Rimsky Korsakov
in Mlada. This quasi-military
march in the Pathétique
is so over-the-top as to be ludicrous,
a spoof that is its own refutation;
compare to the last movements of the
Mahler First and the Shostakovich
Fifth Symphonies. Also note that
in two of Tchaikovsky’s grandest operas,
Maid of Orleans, and Mazeppa,
war is portrayed as resulting in immediate
tragedy for both sides, especially in
Mazeppa when the triumphal military
music of the entr’acte "The Battle
of Poltava" is immediately followed
by the tragedy of the mad scene. In
the last movement of the Pathétique
the argument is over; the poet accepts
that death is inevitable and we encounter
long sad melodic phrases in parallel
motion. The poet dies with the stroke
of the gong. The remainder of the symphony
is an elegy, not without violent anguish,
but sinking inevitably to resignation
and despair. Having thus made up his
mind and written his requiem, Tchaikovsky
was in good spirits. Eyewitnesses report
that as he drank the fatal glass of
water that would kill him, he was laughing.
Paul Shoemaker
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Herbert
von Karajan 
