A Listener Searching for the Real Tchaikovsky

Some comments in a recent “On the Record,” incidentally remarking on Tchaikovsky’s predilection for “whining” in his later, best-known symphonies, seem to have struck a nerve among readers, one asking why I so “hated” Tchaikovsky.

There’s no hate involved. Rather, the hardly unique feeling of having had enough of music that has been omnipresent for so long. This writer’s comments were, however, based more on remembered reactions than current experience. In other words, it was time to go back for some more listening.

The results were predictable to a degree, led by the feeling that the last three symphonies had outstayed their welcome and should be, if not put to pasture, given a long rest. At the same time, there was the growing feeling that the first three symphonies, although gaining in popularity--and getting the respect from conductors that has long eluded these works--remain undervalued, if no longer under-recorded. No whining, screaming or breast-beating in the lot. Rather, a degree of lyric freshness and simplicity unduplicated in the later, darker creations.

The total going was made more than interesting by the arrival of a new set of the Tchaikovsky six, with various shorter works, from Yuri Temirkanov and the Royal Philharmonic (RCA Victor 61821, six CDs).

We could wish that Temirkanov’s other orchestra, the more idiomatically attuned St. Petersburg Philharmonic, had been employed. But Temirkanov does get the Londoners to play his way, a Russian way, with use of expressive string slides and a good deal more vibrato and rubato than is fashionable in the West.

Temirkanov’s tempos are on the slow side, but never lacking a strong rhythmic pulse. Thus, there’s always a feeling of motion, even thrust.

Slow movements tend to be more lingered over, with a wealth of expressive detail exposed than is common among less experienced--perhaps less affectionate--practitioners.

Overall, and obviously this is a broad generalization, these readings are marked by shapeliness and emotional balance, but not to the exclusion of heat, as in the finale of the Fourth, or in the penultimate movement of the “Pathetique,” which has great cumulative power.

Unlike most conductors, Temirkanov leads the first three symphonies with breadth and lyric grace, e.g., the adagio of the exquisite No. 1 (“Winter Dreams”) is surely one of the slowest recorded but rhythmically so firm that only the clock makes one aware of the time elapsed.

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Riccardo Muti’s reissued (as EMI 67742, 5 CDs, mid-price) set of the six numbered symphonies and “Manfred” first appeared in the 1970s, when it created quite a stir for its swiftness, lean sonorities and lack of sentimentality.

Muti was out to clean up Tchaikovsky’s act by banishing the bathos usually overemphasized in Nos. 4, 5 and 6. Noble idea, but taken to such extremes that the scores’ innate weightiness and pathos were eliminated, to their detriment.

This is Tchaikovsky filtered through a neoclassical sensibility that regards textural clarity and rhythmic momentum as end-alls: an approach so much at odds with the music that much of it emerges more thin than detailed.

Muti’s orchestra, the Philharmonia of London, is a more virtuosic one than Temirkanov’s RPO. But the latter has the right spirit--and the right conductor.

For an approach similar to Muti’s, but not taken to its extremes, try the budget-priced set of the six from Lorin Maazel and the Vienna Philharmonic on only four CDs (London 430 787).

Of more esoteric interest is a re-release of Tchaikovsky’s ur -”Romeo and Juliet” of 1869, less coherent and certainly less memorably schmaltzy than the popular final product of a decade later. But the coupling (on Chandos 9191) is a valuable rarity: Tchaikovsky’s incidental music, as well as the reasonably familiar overture, to an 1876 French-language production of “Hamlet” that never took place.

The pieces effectively evoke the moods of the various scenes for which they were intended, and there are some particularly sensitive pages for Ophelia (soprano Janis Kelly).

The lively, handsomely recorded performance is by the London Symphony conducted by Geoffrey Simon.