Search - Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Vladimir Delman, Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Torino :: Pëtr Il'ic Caikovskij: Sinfonia n. 2; Sinfonia n. 4; Sinfonia n. 6

Vladimir Delman is not a name overly familiar to the English-speaking world, but in Italy, during his lifetime, he was widely considered the greatest living conductor of the Tchaikovsky symphonies, and a formidable rival for other composers as well (his recording of the Bruckner Ninth is on the short list of most collectors). Delman, whom the pianist Simone Pedroni has called "a true giant of music [and] a visionary interpreter," was born in Leningrad in 1923. He decided to leave the Soviet Union in 1974 and ended up in Italy, where he directed the Bologna Community Theater and the Milan RAI Symphony Orchestra, and then founded the Milan Giuseppe Verdi Orchestra, now conducted by Riccardo Chailly. An eccentric and enigmatic figure, Delman looked far older than he was, was demanding at rehearsals, and often exploded in fury if anyone else used his dressing room, spraying it with disinfectant afterwards to "make it inhabitable". Whatever his personal oddities, and despite the fact that he seldom had a really first-class orchestra to work with, Vladimir Delman?s small legacy of recordings reveals an artist of the utmost fascination and brilliance, as these 1984 Tchaikovsky recordings reflect.