TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 4 in f, op. 36; Romeo and Juliet – Russian National Orchestra/ Mikhail Pletnev, conductor – PentaTone multichannel SACD 5186 384, 60:19 [Distr. by Naxos] *****:
Readers, you have no idea how surprised I am at myself seeing those five stars in the header—Pletnev’s first go around with these symphonies, recorded in 1993-96 when the Russian National Orchestra was brand spanking new, and issued to much drooling and slobbering particularly in the British press, left me cold as ice. They were (are) dry run-throughs, played with little feeling and an antiseptic formula that results in one of the dullest sets I think has ever been recorded. Of course I must state my bias—at the time the RNO sounded so completely un-Russian to me, an egregious example of how gross “internationalization” has stolen the distinctive characteristics from our orchestras worldwide and made them to sound so similar in so many ways, that I reacted to their playing—always immaculate and fabulously proficient—in a very negative way. To a certain extent, that much has not changed in the current issue.
Pletnev himself is a mystery to me. I have heard some of his piano work, Scarlatti in particular, that I find stunning, but his Schumann is obnoxiously willful and horribly misunderstood. His conducting has proved more level-headed to me, though there are times when I hear him doing something unusual that doesn’t seem to have an especial rationale behind it, simply spur-of-the-moment and impulsively uttered. But here, in this new recording (and the Fifth Symphony has been released also—beginnings of the whole set?) we have a conductor that seems to have rethought his position on many things and is able to convey to us his vision of what is maybe Tchaikovsky’s most personal work (I know, the Pathetique, right? Wrong! It was far more general a statement in nature than the Fourth), and he does so without hesitancy or anything willful at all. This time around his eccentricities, if one may call then that, are much more in the Bernstein mold, meaning that they make sense. But what is really nice about this reading is the unbelievable clarity of line that Pletnev achieves, in this most contrapuntal of the composer’s works. It is no easy thing to tie the “fate” motive into the rest of this work without it sounding, as it does so many times, simply bombastic. Pletnev pulls it all together in a way that is convincing, lyrical, tender, and downright exciting. The RNO plays with vibrancy and color that I think was missing on the earlier recording.
Romeo and Juliet fares just as well, this tried and true warhorse getting a firm injection of passion and energy that is in no way artificial or contrived, full of splendor and beauty like few others. Pentatone’s sound is simply spectacular, the surround mechanism being used to full effect, and it will light up you listening space. A no-brainer, even for those with ten other recordings of this work.
— Steven Ritter