Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture

The occasional or commemorative compositions of the great composers often have historical significance, especially when they are associated with royalty and the military, but only a few works in this category have become popular hits. Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky composed several celebratory pieces on commission to mark national events and achieved some success, despite the fact that he usually discounted them as hack work and felt embarrassed by their bombast and shallowness.

Bernstein was among the greatest American composers and conductors of the last century. Here, the program includes some of the finest and most popular of classical music. Then, Bernstein's interpretations put the whole recording far beyond wonderful.

Eugene Ormandy (born Jenő Blau; November 18, 1899 – March 12, 1985) was a Hungarian-born American conductor and violinist, best known for his association with the Philadelphia Orchestra, as its music director.

After a successful early career in Hollywood as a jazz musician and arranger, André Previn transitioned into the world of classical music, making a name for himself in London for his innovative programming and refreshing reappraisals of many warhorses, in particular in English and Russian music. Tchaikovsky was one of the composers that Previn was good at. The 1812 orchestral songs are also known as well-known recordings and have been reprinted several times in the CD era. "Manfred Symphony" is a great performance that shed light on this work that had not been recorded much before, and LP has long been known for its excellent recording audio files.

No figure in 20th century American classical music had as prominent or controversial a career – or did more to sell classical music to the general public as something genuinely exciting, and worth getting into a sweat over – than Leonard Bernstein. For more than 30 years, from his assumption of the post of Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in 1958 until the final concerts that he conducted in obviously failing health near the end of his life in 1990, he was the most prominent and widely recognized American-born conductor in the world, and the dominant personality in American classical music as both a conductor and, to a lesser degree, a composer. A flamboyant public figure, he burst three different times on the musical world – twice in classical with a rush of success on Broadway in between – in a blaze of glory, in the space of 15 years; and over a career lasting from the early '40s until the beginning of the '90s, he never lost an opportunity to advance his reputation as well as the cause of music.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893 was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, his First Piano Concerto, several symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin.
Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant. There was scant opportunity for a musical career in Russia at the time and no system of public music education. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865. The formal Western-oriented teaching that he received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary nationalist movement embodied by the Russian composers of The Five with whom his professional relationship was mixed.

Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky was the author of some of the most popular themes in all of classical music. He founded no school, struck out no new paths or compositional methods, and sought few innovations in his works. Yet the power and communicative sweep of his best music elevates it to classic status, even if it lacks the formal boldness and harmonic sophistication heard in the compositions of his contemporaries, Wagner and Bruckner. It was Tchaikovsky's unique melodic charm that could, whether in his Piano Concerto No. 1 or in his ballet The Nutcracker or in his tragic last symphony, make the music sound familiar on first hearing.

Tchaikovsky stands as the central figure of 19th-century Russian Romanticism, embodying its widespread and vibrant vitality alongside a profound and sincere depth. This collection seeks to encapsulate the epic and intense qualities inherent in the genius of his compositions.

Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra bring us a remarkable performance of select masterpieces from Tchaikovsky, including the well-known 1812 Overture, complete with live cannon recordings.