Phew! What a relief to learn that the Russian National Orchestra can, after all, play Russian music when working with a conductor who knows what he is doing. Not all of Vladimir Jurowski’s recordings with this orchestra have been excellent (Prokofiev’s Fifth was a big disappointment, for example), but this one certainly is. Having unusual, not over-recorded repertoire certainly helps. Tchaikovsky’s incidential music to Hamlet consists of a reduced version of the symphonic poem we all know and (some of us) love, with a bunch of interludes, fanfares, melodramas, and songs filling out about 45 minutes of music. Not all of it is top-drawer Tchaikovsky, but it is colorful, tuneful, atmospheric, and utterly characteristic. It’s also played to the hilt and magnificently recorded, with Tatiana Monogarova a nicely vulnerable Ophelia in her two songs (the bass gets a brief gravedigger’s song, and that’s it).
Tchaikovsky’s original version of Romeo and Juliet is substantially shorter than the more familiar revised score (about seven minutes in this performance) largely on account of the totally different introduction and briefer coda. The battle music is the same, but the development section and final climax are completely different, and Friar Lawrence is missing (and I personally couldn’t care less). I actually like the original introduction better than the later one, but from the start of the battle onward Tchaikovsky’s second thoughts are uniformly superior. This is clearly the best recording of the 1869 original to date: it’s taut and exciting, and Jurowski lets the cymbals, bass drum, and timpani go nuts at all the right places. Here, then, is a terrific disc to fill out your already more-or-less complete Tchaikovsky collection. [12/1/2008]
