This is the genuine article – live and alive – an unpatched one-off performance bursting at the seams with passion, presence, theatre and vitality. But make no mistake, this is not lofty Tchaikovsky. Gergiev almost admits as much in an accompanying interview: ‘When I come to terms with this symphony or another, I sometimes feel it’s not with my brain, but with my biological system, with my physical energy.’ So it’s worlds apart from Pletnev’s classically inclined, carefully modulated, cumulatively satisfying unity-in-continuity. I can’t tell you whether Gergiev’s very physical bursts of tone and tempo manoeuvres, particularly in the first two movements, are what you will want to hear in a recorded performance of this symphony. That is for you to decide. For what it is worth, my reactions differed from one hearing to the next, always admiring such things as the dramatic effectiveness of the strong bass pedal link (the marking is piano) between the end of the finale’s opening Andante and the start of its ensuing Allegro vivace, but occasionally left uneasy by some of the tempo contrasts (the radical slowing for the first-movement recapitulation’s bassoon solo almost suggesting that Rumpole of the Bailey had inadvertently wandered on to the scene).
‘Love at first sight’, as Gergiev’s collaboration with the orchestra has been described, translates here into body-and-soul compliance with the conductor’s expressive intentions; the steep crescendos and tempo variations all unanimously and vividly projected. And for its own part the orchestra does what it does best: strings lacing the lyricism with their famed vibrato-rich playing, and bouncing the outer sections of the third movement Waltz as only they know how to do. The general tone and manner, particularly in tuttis, reminded me of the way the orchestra, three or four decades ago, used to respond to the youngish Solti (to some ears, with a wonderfully earthy, elemental edge; to others, with unvaried coarseness). And if certain passages would probably have benefited from studio consideration – the slow movement’s opening minutes here are curiously blank, and the delicate fantasy of the Waltz’s central section is loud and slightly gabbled – it is doubtful whether Gergiev in the studio would have achieved the same overall degree of ‘free flight’, as he puts it himself.
Turning to recent competition, apart from the studio Pletnev mentioned above, there is Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic, recorded live like Gergiev, but a compilation of more than one performance, and altogether more refined and subtly varied. And both rivals offer substantial couplings; Abbado, an imposing Mussorgsky Songs and Dances of Death; Pletnev, probably the finest Hamlet ever committed to disc. Both their recordings also have a marginally wider dynamic range. Not that the slight compression of the Austrian Radio recording for Gergiev is troublesome; on the contrary, it enables a higher than usual transfer level, and thus greater immediacy for the feel and the features of what was clearly an ‘event’ – one with no serious spills and plenty of thrills.'