Tchaikovsky Symphony

Monteux/BSO - Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.4
Vinyl Rip in 24-Bit/96-kHz | FLAC tracks | Covers | RS, MU | 772 MB incl. 3% recovery
1960 | Genre: Classical | Label: RCA | LSC-2369 | US pressing
Red Seal, shaded dog label. Original pressing 4S/5S
This album was listed in TAS (The Absolute Sound) issue #32

In the Boston Symphony series of stereophonic recordings, we find this kind of orchestral arrangement, and Monteux's architectural vision in all of these performances produces a sound-world that can be breathtaking. Listen to the sweep of the last movement of the Tchaikovsky Fifth with its wonderful balance of strings, winds, and brass, the full grandeur of the piece without any sense of heaviness, and the sheer élan of the coda that leaves the listener exalted, not exhausted. Or turn to the dichotomy of brooding and extrovert energy in the opening movement of the Fourth Symphony. While we can hear superb performances of these works by conductors like Mravinsky, the Monteux Tchaikovsky symphonies are true classics, that combine wise, beautiful, powerful performances with remarkably fine sound.

( Thomas Simone )

Carlo Maria Giulini was born in Barletta, Southern Italy in May 1914 with what appears to have been an instinctive love of music. As the town band rehearsed he could be seen peering through the ironwork of the balcony of his parents’ home, immovable and intent. The itinerant fiddlers who roamed the countryside during the lean years of the First World War also caught his ear. In 1919, the family moved to the South Tyrol, where the five-year-old Carlo asked his parents for "one of those things the street musicians play". Signor Giulini acquired a three-quarter size violin, setting in train a process which would take his son from private lessons with a kindly nun to violin studies with Remy Principe at Rome’s Academy of St Cecilia at the age of 16.

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Symphony 6 in B minor "Pathétique" Op. 74
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - Daniele Gatti
SACD ISO (2.0/MCH): 3,98 GB | 24B/88,2kHz Stereo FLAC: 1,21 GB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Harmonia Mundi USA # HMU 807394 | Country/Year: Europe 2006
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

…The detail and clarity of the engineering, plus the spacious, airy overall spectrum of the recording (made at the famous Watford Colosseum), cements the conclusion that it is still possible to make a classic Tchaikovsky symphony recording that listeners are likely to enjoy decades in the future, just as recordings made decades ago—Wilhelm Furtwängler's (on Naxos and EMI), or Bernstein's and Mravinsky's second recordings (both on DG)—are today. Recording Of The Month.

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 4 & Capriccio Italien op. 45
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - Daniele Gatti
SACD ISO: 2,89 GB (Stereo + MCH DSD) | FLAC @ 24bit/88.2kHz: 930 MB | Full Artwork
Label/Cat#: Harmonia Mundi USA # HMU 807393 | Country/Year: Europe 2005 | 5% Rec. Info
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

…If old timer stereo buffs still hold to the iron-handed Mravinsky or the leather-gloved Abbado, even they will have to admit that only Jansons of digital recordings comes close to Gatti in making the case for Tchaikovsky's Fourth as a masterful symphony. Harmonia Mundi's English-based recorded sound is just as clear and bright as its French- or American-based recorded sound, but also warmer and lusher and more vivid.