Your favourite Tchaikovsky symphony?

[DavidW]

Looks like I was being a smart ass back in 2007.  My favorite back then was the 4th.  My favorite now is the 6th.  I like all of them but listen to 4-6 and Manfred more than 1-3.

[Florestan]

My order is 5-1-6-4-2-3.

[Karl Henning]

Looks like I was being a smart ass back in 2007.  My favorite back then was the 4th.  My favorite now is the 6th.  I like all of them but listen to 4-6 and Manfred more than 1-3.

Manfred is magnificent!

[DavidW]

My order is 5-1-6-4-2-3.

Ah yes rankings!  My personal preference is 6 > 4 > 5 > Manfred > 3 > 1 > 2.

[Brian]

Hmmmmmmm.

4-5-6-1-2-Manfred-3?

But the drop-off is near the end. It's really only 3 that I don't understand/enjoy and only Manfred that I have to listen to sparingly because of its excesses.

[71 dB]

I haven't explored Tchaikovsky's symphonies.

Update nearly 17 years later: Still haven't explored Tchaikovsky's symphonies.  

[Karl Henning]

Update nearly 17 years later: Still haven't explored Tchaikovsky's symphonies. 

It's time, isn't it?

[Luke]

Don't hurry the man Karl!     

[Maestro267]

Actually 17 years ago would've been when I first heard the Tchaikovsky symphonies.

[71 dB]

It's time, isn't it?

The thought of which performance to check out... 

[Karl Henning]

The thought of which performance to check out... 

There are many good performances.

[DavidW]

The thought of which performance to check out... 

The absolute best:


For modern sound:

[Brian]

Wholeheartedly second the Jurowski recommendation (and he's great in the early symphonies) but I would also put Markevitch up there on the Mount Rushmore of Tchaikovsky symphony interpreters!

[Florestan]

The absolute best:

Maybe, but I wouldn't recommend it as the first, let alone the only, choice to people with no special interest in Tchaikovsky, a category to which Poju obviously belongs. Besides, it's incomplete, and Winter Dreams and Manfred are unmissable. IMO Poju's best option is this:



Complete symphonies including Manfred, all the important overtures, two ballet suites, the charming string serenade and PC1 with Andrei Gavrilov. Solid, no-nonsense performances in excellent sound. One could really not wish more, who is not particularly a fan of Tchaikovsky.

[Wanderer]

I see that I'd voted for Symphony No.1 in the poll (who are the other three voters? ). It is still the Tchaikovsky symphony I cherish the most - his most balletic, and without the soul-crushing dourness of later works.
Of the last three symphonies, I used to like the 4th the best, but it's the Currentzis 6 I return to the most nowadays; he manages to convey the hurricane of a tormented, desperate soul (which I assume is what Tchaikovsky would've wanted) and not make it sound like a histrionic tantrum, which is what usually turns out in modern performances.

[AnotherSpin]

Oh, I wasn't talking about conductors, but about people who complain about Tchaikovsky being schmaltzy and melodramatic. 

Re-listened to the 4th yesterday, in parts, couldn't do it completely. Particularly repulsive are all these "folk" songs and motifs, as Во поле березка стояла. Mother Russia, the stench of gutalin and manure, ruddy, pimply, sweaty девки, short and crooked drunken мужики with sparse beards, vodka flowing straight from the samovar.

[Florestan]

Re-listened to the 4th yesterday, in parts, couldn't do it completely. Particularly repulsive are all these "folk" songs and motifs, as Во поле березка стояла. Mother Russia, the stench of gutalin and manure, ruddy, pimply, sweaty девки, short and crooked drunken мужики with sparse beards, vodka flowing straight from the samovar.

I am reminded of Eduard Hanslick's criticism of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto:

    "The Russian composer Tchaikovsky is an inflated [talent], without discrimination or taste. Such is also his long and pretentious Violin Concerto. For a while it moves musically, and not without spirit. But soon vulgarity gains the upper hand. The violin is no longer played; it is pulled, torn, shredded. The [second movement] Adagio is on its best behavior. But it breaks off to make way for a finale that transfers us to the brutal and wretched jollity of a Russian holiday. We see plainly the savage, vulgar faces; we hear curses, we smell vodka. Friedrich Vischer once observed, speaking of obscene pictures, that they stink to the eye. Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear."

(emphasis mine)

FWIW, this VC is one of my Top 5 favorites. As for Hanslick's own music, as we Romanians say, not even the devil has heard (of) it. 

[AnotherSpin]

I am reminded of Eduard Hanslick's criticism of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto:

    "The Russian composer Tchaikovsky is an inflated [talent], without discrimination or taste. Such is also his long and pretentious Violin Concerto. For a while it moves musically, and not without spirit. But soon vulgarity gains the upper hand. The violin is no longer played; it is pulled, torn, shredded. The [second movement] Adagio is on its best behavior. But it breaks off to make way for a finale that transfers us to the brutal and wretched jollity of a Russian holiday. We see plainly the savage, vulgar faces; we hear curses, we smell vodka. Friedrich Vischer once observed, speaking of obscene pictures, that they stink to the eye. Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear."

(emphasis mine)

FWIW, this VC is one of my Top 5 favorites. As for Hanslick's own music, as we Romanians say, not even the devil has heard of it. 

I'm familiar with this Hanslick comment, with which I agree. By the way, I have long loved the Violin Concerto, especially the middle movement. I don't listen to it anymore.

[Florestan]

I'm familiar with this Hanslick comment, with which I agree.

Well, I find Hanslick's comment particularly inept in view of the fact that the main theme of the finale has more than a vague resemblance to that of Mendelssohn's VC, and Felix certainly did not drink vodka. I wonder what Hanslick may have said about Mussorgsky, who in his late years probably literally smelled like vodka.