Leonard Slatkin's greatest asset in this blazingly assertive Tchaikovsky Third lies in his totally unsentimental approach, vital in this most intractable of the symphonies. For Tchaikovsky, the problems of co-opting sonata form, whilst incorporating national and personal elements into a large-scale symphonic structure found a novel solution in this elusive five-movement score, and yet the relative scarcity of concert performances and satisfactory recordings of the symphony, surely reflects widely held misgivings about the work.
Slatkin negotiates the first movement's major interpretative obstacle, the knotty transition from the Moderato assai to the main Allegro brillante more convincingly even than Jansons (Chandos), and although their respective timings differ by an overall margin of less than three seconds, Slatkin somehow provides his principal oboe with greater room for melodic inflexion in the second subject (5'04'') without losing momentum. Karajan (DG) is less incisively brilliant in the taxing and occasionally random development, where both Slatkin and Jansons excel in clarifying textural ambiguities, in what is arguably the most difficult passage of the symphony. Andrew Litton, incidentally, is hardly less convincing here with the Bournemouth SO (Virgin Classics) at an even faster basic tempo than either Jansons or Slatkin.
Slatkin retains an underlying tension in a very fast Alla Tedesca; incredibly some two minutes faster here than Karajan, whose goaded and charmless reading of the following Andante Elegiaco rapidly palls, especially when compared to Jansons, who again excels in refinement and heartwarming tenderness. But it is Slatkin who draws the most weighty and demonstrative playing of all, in the lovely molto espressivo passage of the Andante, with dark-hued, yet conservatively moulded string textures and quite exemplary wind contributions from the St Louis Symphony Orchestra; another tribute, surely, to Slatkin's great achievement in placing this orchestra solidly alongside the finest US ensembles.
Orchestral virtuosity is again a prime concern in the Scherzo, and Slatkin's tempo certainly places severe demands upon his orchestra, who sound a degree more comfortable than Jansons's Oslo Philharmonic, but in the festive Polonaise of the glittering finale the St Louis playing is absolutely magnificent. Vital, resplendent and exciting as the finale is, the threat of swaggering bombast remains, as Karajan ably demonstrates in a brazen vulgarization of the final anthem-like peroration. Although Jansons's Chandos performance set new standards in the symphony, his recording must now yield to Slatkin's superbly recorded account, which also offers a dashing and forthright Capriccio italien, with predictably virile playing from the superb St Louis orchestra.'