There is an enormous amount to admire in Munch’s reading of Saint-Saëns’ ‘Organ’ symphony, right from the glowing strings of the opening through to the truly superbly articulated first-movement climax. Munch gets real delicacy from his Bostonians in the Poco adagio, and the organ’s entry in the finale is certainly highly impressive. Perhaps the Scherzo could be more on-the-ball, though. This remains one of the top recommendations for this piece.
A genial conductor with a particular gift for French music, Charles Munch extended the Boston Symphony's glory years (begun under the baton of Serge Koussevitzky) into the early 1960s. Munch was so venerated that conservative Bostonians even declined to fuss over rumors that he was having an affair with his niece, pianist Nicole Henriot-Schweitzer; they wrote it off as part of his romantic French nature. Paradoxically, Munch was not precisely French. He was born in Alsace-Lorraine, which at the time (1891) was controlled by Germany and has long hovered between two cultural worlds. Munch himself benefitted from both French and German musical training, and his first important musical posts were in Germany…
This is the seemingly unavoidable Sibelius/Tchaikovsky pairing, one that has launched many a young career. Itzhak Perlman recorded these very same pieces for his own debut album on RCA, and with this very orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf. That's a fine disc, but Perlman would later surpass those efforts in later recordings. Nor do I find Leinsdorf an ideal partner, with the comically booming percussion in the Sibelius perhaps the biggest audible gaffe. These current readings are much more satisfying overall. Mullova has not redone these pieces, nor is she prone to recording much at all, so these early efforts deserve credit for holding up so well.
Swan Lake was the first of Tchaikovsky's three great ballets– works which added a new level of depth and sophistication to what had been a purely superficial art form. Today the music is so well-known and popular that it's impossible to comprehend the difficulties the composer experienced at early performances. Audiences found the music "too symphonic," and the dancers were put off by the prominence given to the orchestra which, they felt, distracted ballet fans from the action on stage. Of course, all of these supposed "defects" are precisely what we admire about the music today, and this elegant but exciting performance reveals the music in all of its glory.
The newest addition to Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra's award-winning survey of Shostakovich's orchestral works takes on symphonies from the opposite ends of the composer's life. Shostakovich's first symphony, composed when he was only 19, announced his presence to the world, while his 15th seemingly grapples with his impending mortality. The Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10, was written as a graduation piece for his composition class at the Leningrad Conservatory. The composer's youth and the influences of Stravinsky and Prokofiev are evident in the work, but there are plenty of allusions to his later style. Slightly on the slower side overall, the emotion and forward motion of the music is not lost. The Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141, written a few years before the composer's death, though not programmatic, seems to present a look at the cycle of life.
Koussevitzky’s early biographer Lourie reports that in his salad days Koussevitzky–like his mentor Arthur Nikisch–“based his performances of Tchaikovsky on the emotional side of the music… (but in later years) after undergoing a great and serious evolution… [Koussevitzky] adopted a correct and entirely new method of treating this composer”. While that new method may have emphasized the music’s symphonic structure and Beethovenian dynamism, Koussevitzky never slighted the seething emotions that permeate this composer’s scores. Ever the showman, Koussevitzky deftly portrays the composer’s shifting moods, from the ink-black darkness and devastation of the Pathetique to the incredible resilience of the human spirit captured in the closing moments of the Fourth Symphony, immediately following the last and most disturbing appearance of the fate motif.