Search - Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, Ferenc Fricsay, RIAS Symphonie-Orchester :: Tschaikowsky: Sinfonie Nr. 4

A gripping, single-minded performance--irresistible

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 12/11/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This 1957 mono recording is the kind you can hear five minutes of while walking through a record store and immediately have to buy, as I did. (It is also over-priced when you conisder that it comes in a flimsy cardboard case with a single paragraph of liner notes.) Fricsay occupied a place in DGG's roster of conductors a notch higher, perhaps, than Igor Markevitch. I am always on the lookout for both because they were capable of catching fire, despite the sonic limitations and second-rate orchestras they were frequently assigned.



Here Fricsay conducts a faultless Tchaikovsky Fourth, full of dynamism without rhetoric, impelled from beginning to end as if by a single driving intention. For 40 min. the RIAS orchestra plays like men possessed--a great performance. The generous fillers are from Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, the Nutcracker, and Eugene Onegin--all well done and with the occasional super-charged moment."