This is a rare event: a single CD of Mravinsky-conducted music at bargain
price. Icone have a done a respectable job with the radio tapes from which
these are taken. Presumably these are the same performances as have appeared
on Philips and Olympia in years gone by and currently on BMG’s 20 CD
2 volume series. Mravinsky’s Tchaikovsky is fabled. He attained the
heights with fabulous performances from the early 1960s on DGG LPs. These
are still available and have been much reissued. I refer here to the stereo
version although I know that the Leningrad PO and Mravinsky also had mono
performances from the 1950s of Symphonies 5 and 6 and that these have been
reissued on CD with a Jansons conducted Symphony No. 4.
Although playing for just short of an hour the present disc represents excellent
value. What almost startles is the unanimity of attack and the consistency
and colour of the sound. The concert hall ambience also helps even if this
means that there is coughing during the Nutcracker excerpts. The Nutcracker
is presented with every splendour as a children’s horror book full of
strange pictures: fear and beauty stalking the corridors. Bogeymen are under
the bed, toys come to life and a snowy romance is in the air. As for Francesca
this is one of Tchaikovsky’s most undervalued scores. For anyone who
has discovered the composer through Symphony No. 4 I would always recommend
hearing a good performance of Francesca before referring them to Symphonies
5 and 6 or Romeo and Juliet. Interestingly I see that the composer planned
an opera on Francesca but this came to nothing and it was left to Rachmaninov
to produce his own impressive effort (now there is a piece that could do
with reissue on CD). Mravinsky plays Francesca at full throttle.
The audience is fairly quiet as well they might be in the face of the white
hot winds and passion that thresh the air and the delicate clarinet-led romance
that dominates the central softer core of the work. Hearing this performance
you can hear what inspired Sibelius in Tapiola and The Tempest
and Bax in the grittier romance of November Woods. This is still
not the equal of a 1979 BBC broadcast by the LSO conducted by Yuri Ahronovitch
but it is amongst the strongest on the market easily jostling shoulders with
Stokowski’s famed Dell’Arte recording with the New York Stadium
Orchestra. The sound is slightly stressed under pressure but very acceptable.
All thanks to Icone for making this available and to LENTELERADIO for licensing
the tapes.
Recommended.
Reviewer
Rob Barnett
FastCounter
by LinkExchange
Leningrad PO/Evgeny
Mravinsky 
