With both these new issues of Tchaikovsky's Fourth the fill-ups, valuable and unexpected, are a prime consideration, particularly in relation to the selected comparison I have listed, which offers no coupling. Yet that Jansons Chandos issue still provides a benchmark, and for all Muti's electric qualities and the refinement of the Philadelphia's playing—with that great orchestra's strings at last beginning to sound sumptuous on a new recording—the EMI issue does not quite match it.
They have improved the recording quality in their difficult Philadelphia venue, but it is still not as crystal clear as the Jansons, and even more strikingly the recording of the Scriabin cannot match the 20-year-old analogue Decca rival I have listed, whether in vividness, in clarity of detail or sense of presence. The Philadelphia chorus, too, is dim in the Scriabin next to its London rival, providing merely a rather distant trimming to the sound. Alexeev is a brilliant soloist, but not as characterful as Ashkenazy. Yet this is a superb reading, warm and sensuous, in line with Muti's previous recordings of Scriabin, and anyone wanting this particular coupling can safely go ahead. [Scriabin devotees should note that Prometheus is also available as part of a Scriabin set—Ed.]
In the symphony Muti and the orchestra have completely shed the curious lassitude and absence of bite which afflicted the first of their new Tchaikovsky recordings, the Pathetique (reviewed 3/91). Speeds are well-chosen, and there are moments of pure inspiration, as in the scherzando pointing of the clarinet entry in the second subject of the first movement (track 1, 5'16''), delectably done.
As for Slatkin, except perhaps in the scherzo, he cannot match either Muti or Jansons in the tautness of the performance. Ensemble is good, the playing refined, but with the recorded sound lacking bite, the result is relatively uninvolving, needing more tension. That is particularly so in the first movement, where Slatkin opts for surprisingly slow speeds, whether in the introduction with its dramatic motto theme or in the main Moderato con anima. The value of the disc lies in the fill-ups. There is no current rival listed of Fate and only one of The voyevoda, works which Tchaikovsky thought he had destroyed, but which have been reconstructed from orchestral parts. Rightly so, when they both illustrate the composer's strength in controlling a large-scale structure without resorting to conventional symphonic form. Notably in The voyevoda Slatkin finds a tension largely missing in the symphony.'