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| Tchaikovsky: Symphonies no 4, 5, & 6 / Karajan, Berlin PO |
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List Price: $17.98
Our Price: $13.99
You Save: $ 3.99 (22%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0028945308821
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
Number Of Discs: 2
Publisher: Deutsche Grammophon
Release Date: 1997-07-15
Studio: Deutsche Grammophon
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Editorial Reviews:
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This moderately priced package gives you the best of Herbert von Karajan's Tchaikovsky performances, and when he was "on" with this composer, he was very impressive indeed. These are exceptionally well played, exciting, even noble versions of the composer's three most popular symphonies, and although Karajan recorded each of them four or five times, this least expensive edition is still the one to get. --David Hurwitz
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Extremely solid & well played symphonies.
Comment: I was very impressed when I heard this CD. I really could not believe that the Berlin Phil. sounded so solid. The brass play consistently throughout and they actually sound like the CSO at times. The strings/woodwinds are well balanced, lush, and simply play extremely well.
These symphonies are among the best I've ever heard, technically, that is, of course everyone has different tastes in interpretations, but for me, this one does it. I'm very happy that throughout the album, all 3 symphonies are played consistently and with a solidity that amazes me. As a musician, one always looks forward, first, to a solid performance, then can one enjoy it.
As for the sonics, I'm won't go into that, some say the textures are shrill and that the digital age got the best of Karajan, I'm just reviewing this on a pure musical aspect, not engineering.
I highly recommend this CD.
Customer Rating:
Summary: As Mr. Welk used to say, "wonderful, wonderful."
Comment: I have symphonies 1 to 3 on vinyl and I bought from Amazon symphonies 4 to 6 about 4 or 5 months ago. These date from the mid 70s and I just viewed symphonies 4 to 6 on DVD via NETFLIX.
My very first classical lp was Ormandy & the Mormon Tab choir doing the 1812 overture with "Russian Church Bells" and canon. I have always loved Tchaikovsky. I have recently gotten into his solo piano music and if you have never you are really missing out--Chopin esque to say the least.
I love Beethoven for the thunder and the beauty, often at the same time. Tchaikovsky comes just about as close as anyone I have heard to matching Beethoven, though not as often. These cds are a royal trip. I went for about an hour walk the other day and had them in my mp3 player and rewound the 4th movement of symphony five 3 or 4 times! The percusion from the kettles and the brass really kick butt. Karajan brings out the beauty, the power, and the glory of Tchaikovsky. I enjoy the Abbado CSO complete symphonies, but Karajan easily tops them. Symphony 4 is almost as much fun to listen to as 5. The 3rd movement of symphony 4 features ALL of the STRING instruments being plucked, not bowed, throughout the movement and when that movement ends, the fourth movement starts with thundering power. Few can weave melodies like Tchaikovsky and few can bring down the house as he can. WOW!
These symphonies are superbly played and directed and the recording is top notch. The DVD's match them for sound, but I still favor the cd over the dvd except it is interesting to watch them performed.
This 2 fer set is a great value.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Very good, but with some disappointments
Comment: We're all familiar with the cliché about the opening of Beethoven's fifth being "fate knocking at the door." If this is true, then the opening of Tschaikovsky's fourth is "fate brought the whole SWAT team to kick the door in." The Berlin Philharmonic's gutsy brass are just perfect for this task, and prove it over and over in the course of the symphony. I would have to call the orchestra's rendition under von Karajan as "definitive" as any I've heard.
In the fifth symphony, I do have a beef with the clarinetist in the first movement. It's a simple part to play, and there's really only one big mistake you can make with it -- and this clarinetist makes it. It's fine in the soft passages, but above mezzo forte, it's overblown in the chalumeaux register to the point of distorting the timbre from clarinet into klaxon horn. That's not pleasing, and in fact, is sort of "junior high school." Other than that, though, the fifth symphony is as well-done as the fourth. Particularly pleasing are the swirling rises and falls of the lyric melodies, where von Karajan has the strings and woodwinds not just playing together, but emoting together.
It's in the sixth symphony that I'm most disappointed. In certain places in the first and fourth movements, I'm tempted to say out loud to the venerable Herr von Karajan, "Uh, Herb, don't you think that's a little fast? Like, you're taking the pathos out of the Pathetique, I think." Strangely, this seems to happen every time the main subject is a legato theme in the trombones -- so consistently that I speculate that the BPO might have a problem with short-winded trombonists.
In summation: I'm glad I own it, but there are many better recordings of the Pathetique, and better clarinetists for the fifth symphony.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Much too fastly played for a true Russian flavour.
Comment: The problem with Karajan is that late in his career, he seems to look for the inventive by doing some extreme things with the music he is well capable of conducting. Although these recordings of the 4-6 of the Tchaikovsky symphonies were done in the seventies, the greatly exaggerated tempi is one of those features of his style that will drive you mad as a Russian afficionado.
For the price this is going, I was convinced to have a good deal, only to be disappointed by the resultive playing. You wouldn't expect such a renowned conductor and orchestra slander through such well known classical pieces, but unfortunately, that's what you get here.
Therefore, I'd recommend taking either the Gergiev or Jansons for the 5th, while Pletnev for the 6th remains the best choice still. For the 4th, Jansons seems to be the best bet too.
But, please, do yourself a favour, and let this Russian master delight you in a better way than these recordings can offer you. You'll be thankful, I'm sure.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The best recording of von Karajan
Comment: I have always been thinking that Tchaikovsky exists between Hollywood movie composers and Broadway musical writers; after all he was a man who wrote Swan Lake, Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty.
To me his position was not on serious side of vast universe of classical music.
Not until I heard the Path?tique symphony recorded by Karajan today.
My younger brother and I were sitting with my parents in our living room watching Toshiba black & white TV set when Herbert von Karajan first visited Japan to conduct NHK Symphony Orchestra in 1950s.
They were playing Beethoven 5th, but I was too small, five or six years old then to appreciate the music.
However, I clearly remember the profound silence followed the last coda of symphony.
I suspect my mother was crying. That was how we found the German conductor.
In college, I listened to Furtwangler.
I thought Karajan was lightweight in comparison with his great predecessor.
Especially for Beethoven, his interpretations were too modern and international, sans German spirituality.
But this performance of Path?tique has changed my perception of Karajan entirely.
The energy and passion is incredible, it equals to that of Eroica symphony recorded by Furtwangler in 1944.
Simply amazing!
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