Customer Reviews

Tchaikovsky: Manfred Symphony ~ Jurowski

5 star:		(4)
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This new, live, recording is sensational. The sound packs a wallop, the playing is nearly faultless, the conducting strong. Best of all, there's no hanky-panky with the score: no cuts, and no orchestration changes like so many conductors do. Of the Manfred's that have come our way recently, this one is the best as far as I'm concerned. The most amazing thing is that this orchestra can play this fiendishly difficult score so well in a live performance. Ok, so the playing time is short, for a Manfred of this power I'll overlook that.

Recently, the LPO performed inter alia Tchaikovsky in my city, and this disc was sold on the spot of the performance, but I missed it. After that performance, I regretted so much not to have bought the CD.
The Manfred Symphony is more a symphonic poem with a set plot to it based on the poem of the same name by Lord Byron.
The movements contain some of the most dark and emotionally haunting melodies, and the LPO under Vladimir Jurowski really hits the nail right on the head with regard to the aspects of interpretation.
I cannot understand why some classical fans dislike this work. It is a piece that you will get more and more emotionally involved with upon repeated listenings. May be they got other versions without the same depth of interpretation as you'd get in this recording.
Comparing to the live performance that I attended on Tchaikovsky's Sixth with the same team and combination, I am quite confident that we will be able to hear more and more of top-rate Tchaikovsky stuff from them.
You can take my word for it.

With all the classic symphonic, melodic, and ballet elements of a Tchaikovsky composition, this Manfred is haunting, brilliant and seamless, as good a Tchaikovsky symphonic performance as you could want, and the most enjoyable I have yet heard. You don't have to work at this performance . . . the musical poem just rolls along.

For some quasi-insane reason I decided to listen to a dozen or so versions of Manfred, hoping to find a recording that overcame the work's banal stretches and bring out its hidden potential. Great Russian conductors have avoided this work altogether -- I am especially thinking of Mravinsky and Temirkanov -- but today all of them seem to have recorded it. Sorting through the older ones (Markevitch, Rozhdestvensky, svetlanov) and the most recent (Petrenko, Pletnev, Jurowski) one finds that all have a natural feeling for the flow of the music and a lack of embarrassment when it brings the circus to town and throws red meat to the lions. Yet it was a non-Russian, Toscanini, who showed that by subjecting the score to the utmost intensity will achieve the best results. but then, Toscanini also cut six minutes from Manfred, including the empty fugue in the finale that always feels like empty filler (maybe it was written in case a professor form the Leipzig conservatory showed up in the audience). None of the above readings comes close to Toscanini's intensity, and for those who want to hear for themselves, it's the 1949 studio recording transferred by RCA that is the desirable one, all tings considered. It even comes in relatively god sound for the era.

Back to modern recordings, the most successful have also been rather tame. Pletnev and Chailly exemplify the urge to smooth out the score and downplay its vulgarities. But in so doing, they risk depriving us of the visceral excitement that is Tchaikovsky's signature. which is a long lead up to Vladimir Jurowski, who takes the less-is-more approach but with sufficient tension and drama that he carries it off. His real secret is his natural musical intuition; you feel that the phrasing floats along in just the right way, neither raising the temperature to ignite fake drama nor lowering the temperature to the point of politeness. In addition, the London Phil. plays with real commitment, and the recorded sound is a delight in its naturalness.

Expect a balletic reading with sprung rhythms, flowing melodies that are allowed free rein, sparkling woodwinds in the Scherzo, and a candid approach to the finale, the weakest movement in Manfred, where Tchaikovsky throws in a grab bag of tricks to no great purpose. For me, Jurowski solves every problem, and by placing him alongside Toscanini, one feels at long last that this dark horse among Tchaikovsky's symphonies has received it due.

P.S. - For a no-holds-barred rendition that shies away form none of Manfred's crudities, Svetlanov would be a good choice.