Tchaikovsky Swan Lake

Classics Today:

Rozhdestvensky's A-plus, totally complete performance

The Minnesota Orchestra, one of the leading American orchestras, has often been referred to as the "orchestra on wheels" because of its extensive touring. Its music directors and guest conductors include several very prominent names, and it has been featured on broadcasts and recordings dating back to 1923.

André Previn Known as a successful classical conductor, jazz pianist, and composer of jazz, classical, and film music, André Previn frequently bridged the gap between popular and so-called "serious" music, and in doing so broadened the horizons of both. A German-American who fled Nazi Germany with his family in his youth, he went on to win four Academy Awards, all for his work on film musicals in late '50s and '60s, including his adaptation of My Fair Lady (1964). By the '70s, he had established himself as one of the world's leading classical conductors, with terms at the London Symphony Orchestra (1968-1979), Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1976-1984), and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (1985-1992). He also served as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1985 to 1989. During his tenure at the LSO, the BBC series André Previn's Music Hour made him household name.

Andre Previn leads the London Symphony Orchestra, featuring violin solo by Ida Haendel, for this masterpiece from Tchaikovsky.

A collection of all of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies and ballet suites from the rich archives of Deutsche Grammophon. All the performances have been justifiably critically appraised. This volume includes the CD premiere of one of Tchaikovsky’s least-known symphonies – the third. Moshe Atzmon’s airborne reading, stunningly recorded in 1973 in Vienna makes a long-overdue appearance. Rowicki’s accounts of the two popular ballet suites – Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty – are expansive and symphonic in their outlook.

See what's hidden in yourThe Tchaikovsky ballet score recordings conducted for Decca and Philips by the Ukrainian-born Anatole Fistoulari (1907-1995) are prized ‘among the finest ever made’ (Gramophone).As a companion issue to his first, abridged versions of Swan Lake (4825225) and Sleeping Beauty (4827223), this newly remastered set offers another trio of complete LP albums, all stereo recordings from the early 1960s: highlights from Swan Lake made in Amsterdam in 1961, and LSO recordings from 1962 of highlights from Sleeping Beauty, the familiar suite from The Nutcracker and the evergreen Serenade for Strings which only received a limited first release on LP. It is the sense of being present at a live performance that critics prized in Fistoulari’s ballet recordings. As an experienced conductor in the pit, who (perhaps apocryphally) led his first opera performance at the age of twelve, he understood how to make a score glisten with greasepaint in the studio.The legendary 1961 Swan Lake was one of the Concertgebouw’s first stereo recordings, and all the solos are brilliantly played by leaders of the Concertgebouw. Nearly 50 years after its release, the climactic moments of the score still continue to overwhelm, not least thanks to the Decca engineering. The other two albums issued here were originally made by Philips, though the Serenade was first released on its Mercury sub-label, and the Suite from The Nutcracker was not issued at all until 1967, five years after being recorded.