KOUSSEVITZKY conducts Tchaikovsky (1949) - PASC247

These RCA sessions from 1949, near the end of Koussevitsky’s career, enshrine two of the greatest Tchaikovsky performances in the history of recording. Their neglect by RCA in the CD era is inexplicable (or rather an all-too-predictable reflection of the philistine cluelessness of the latter-day corporate descendants of such once-great record companies), and we are in Pristine’s debt for making them available again.

This is simply astounding music-making, in its combination of disciplined precision with extreme spontaneity and emotional generosity. That famous Koussevitsky Boston sonority—burnished mahogany, weighty and concentrated—was ideal for Tchaikovsky. The first movement of the symphony covers a huge range of tempo: a continuous controlled acceleration through the long main theme (bars 27–52—compare Furtwängler [VPO/EMI, 1951] and Mengelberg [Concertgebouw/Columbia, 1929] here, the former doggedly slow until an impulsive last-moment surge; the latter light and precise before a heavy rhetorical underlining of the cadence); later, an abrupt gearshift in the move to B Major (bar 134, in blatant disregard of the score’s injunction Ben sostenuto il tempo precedente—and listen to his extraordinarily vocal shaping of the violin phrases here); on the other hand, he maintains a fanatically strict tempo throughout the development section. Moments of extreme interpretive license are handled with such conviction as to completely disarm criticism, as in his hair-raising injection of a few seconds’ silence right before the climactic statement of the main theme in the coda (bar 402). The slow movement is measured and brooding, with dark velvet strings and pungent wind chording. The faster middle section is somber and anxious, quite a contrast with Monteux’s elegant cut and thrust here, in his RCA recording with the same orchestra 10 years later. Koussevitsky’s Scherzo is quite amazing in the vibrant fullness of sound and crackling intensity he draws from the massed pizzicato strings. The finale is measured, weighty, very Russian. A live version from the same year is faster and more excitable, but with the drawback of dim sound and an over-filtered transfer (Music & Arts).

The Serenade is every bit as compelling in its incredible panache and throwaway bravura, delivered with an iron rhythmic grip (outer movements); and in the Elegy, a sonorous vibrancy, tonal luster, and authentically Russian declamation, rising to rare heights of eloquence in the reprise of the main theme, with the tune in the violas against two independent countermelodies in the violins. This really is in a class of its own, other historic classics notwithstanding—Mengelberg’s radically detached, highly articulated neoclassicism (Concertgebouw, Telefunken, 1938/Biddulph); Mravinsky’s intimate, lyrical refinement (Leningrad Philharmonic, Melodiya, 1949; unfortunately laboring under an unattractively dried-out transfer on BMG); and Dobrowen’s propulsive dash and élan with the Philharmonia (HMV, 1947; recently issued in an excellent transfer by the small British label Historic Recordings, coupled with his equally engaging Fourth Symphony). The alternative version of the waltz was RCA’s filler for the original issue of the symphony; not surprisingly, the performance is nearly identical to the one in the complete recording of a few months later.

The original recording suffers from compression in parts of the first movement of the symphony, though this seems to improve in the course of the performance. But whatever the inherent shortcomings of the source, it pretty much goes without saying that Mark Obert-Thorn’s transfers are as expert as it gets. Another mandatory purchase from Pristine.

Boyd Pomeroy

This article originally appeared in Issue 34:5 (May/June 2011) of Fanfare Magazine.