Tchaikovsky Swan Lake

Karajan was unquestionably a great Tchaikovsky conductor. Yet although he recorded the last three symphonies many times, he did not turn to the first three until the end of the 1970s, and then proved an outstanding advocate. In the Mendelssohnian opening movement of the First, the tempo may be brisk, but the music's full charm is displayed and the melancholy of the Andante is touchingly caught.

Like much of Tchaikovsky's musical output, his ballet scores were often subject to criticism. This is certainly true of his first attempt at ballet, Swan Lake. Although still firmly rooted in the traditions of the day, Tchaikovsky certainly tried to move out on his own by making the score much more orchestra-based than most of his predecessors. This, of course, drew the ire of dancers and theater directors alike as the attention was taken away from the dancers and placed on the musicians. History shines more favorably on Tchaikovsky's independent streak, making him the first Russian composer whose ballet scores are played as stand-alone orchestral works, not to mention the fact that Tchaikovsky was unknowingly paving the way for a string of subsequent Russian ballet composers like Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony was the first symphony Christian Lindberg ever heard, at the age of ten. Nine years later it was the first he performed as a professional musician – in the brass section of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Having embarked on a successful conducting career, the trombonist-turned-international-soloist has since had the opportunity also to conduct the work, most memorably at the Mariinskij Theatre in St Petersburg, the city where the composer himself gave the first performance in 1888. With his Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra, based in the Norwegian city of Bodø well north of the Arctic Circle, Lindberg has now recorded this symphony, which has become one of the composer's best-loved works.

Tchaikovsky - almost alone - saw the possibilities of specially-composed music for the classical ballet, which was hugely popular in nineteenth-century Russia. His secret was to work closely with his choreographer and link music and dance routines at the outset: this proved vital to the stage action and the final success of the whole production. Swan Lake was the first, and Nutcracker the last of Tchaikovsky’s three ballet scores. Following the success of Sleeping Beauty came the request for another ballet, which eventually formed a double-bill with his opera Yolanta. Tchaikovsky agreed, unusually, that some of the Nutcracker music could be played at an orchestral concert before the ballet opened in St Petersburg. At the concert, an enthusiastic audience encored almost every number.