CD Spotlight

Tchaikovsky for the 21st Century?
Jeremy Nicholas on a new concerto cycle
from KOCH Schwann

All Tchaikovsky's works for piano and orchestra! Authentic performances based on the original scores! Complete and unabridged for the first time! Hear the voice of Tchaikovsky on recently-discovered Edison cylinder! What an intriguing 'come-on'. Being a sucker for that sort of thing, the first thing I played, when this handsomely-presented set arrived, was to hear the Edison cylinder. Every Edison I've ever heard is a disappointment - Brahms, Sullivan, Florence Nightingale (probably a fake) and Gladstone (definitely a fake) - and this one's no exception. What you hear of Tchaikovsky (if indeed it is him) hardly offers a rounded portrait of the man. Let me save you some money. If the recording and documentation are genuine (what we hear on the CD has been edited) you get one minute twenty-five seconds of a seven-sided 'conversation' - Anton Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky and Safonov among them - all singing or whistling or yelling into the new machine like children. The purpose was, apparently, to try and persuade Rubinstein to play something. To his eternal shame (and our loss) we hear him saying 'No!'

But enough. You wanted to hear about the authentic, unabridged, complete works for piano and orchestra. Dr Polina Vaidman, principal archivist of the Tchaikovsky Archives in Klin, and pianist Andrej Hoteev have studied 'all the important sources over many years... [He] now presents the brilliant composer in a completely new mantle. Instead of the traditional Soviet concept of Tchaikovsky "realism," Andrej Hoteev's prime concern is the original romanticism of the music, its deep sincerity and intensity, which is free of all triviality and sentimentality.' These are the words of Professor Lyudmila Korabelnikova, Co-Chair of the Tchaikovsky Society in her endorsement of the project [Moscow, April 7th 1998]. There's a lot more half-baked stuff like this which we can safely ignore. Hoteev himself then lays his cards on the table: 'Tchaikovsky was far closer to the sources of Western culture at that time - Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler ... than has generally been assumed over the past hundred years'. Really? 'All four concertos are based on secret (i.e. unpublished) schemes and together they form an inseparable unit. They are far more mystical, more visionary, more romantic than the "Party" and the KGB would have had us believe, with their projected image of the "naive, simple and popular" Tchaikovsky.' Blimey.

Hoteev then adumbrates precisely what errors he has spotted in all the published versions compared to the autograph scores. In the First Concerto these amount to sixteen missing bars in the third movement, half a dozen changes of tempo indications (the original opening tempo was altered to Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso; it should be Andante non troppo e molto maestoso - which is, rather puzzlingly, what my old Augener score says anyway [likewise Gerald Abraham's introduction to the Eulenburg miniature score, which lists variants and changes additional to Hoteev's; and Vol II of David Brown's definitive study of the composer, 1982. Ed.].) and seven minor changes in dynamics. Hardly earth-shaking. In the Second Concerto, Hoteev notices that the opening tempo is marked Allegro brillante not, as in Siloti's edition, Allegro brillante e molto vivace. Gosh. (Not that this deters Hoteev from playing it Moderato maestoso, as we'll see.) Naturally, the cuts Siloti made in the second movement are replaced (there have been a number of fine recordings of the original, not least from Pletnev [with the same conductor as Hoteev, Vladimir Fedoseyev. Ed.], Donohoe and Douglas). The Third Concerto is presented as originally intended (i.e. the well-known single-movement Op.75 followed by the work that has come to be known as the Andante and Finale, Op.79). The Fourth Piano Concerto turns out to be the familiar Concert Fantasy, Op.56. The Fantasy on Bohemian Melodies or Concerto in the Hungarian Style (whatever you want to call it - the booklet does both) by Sophie Menter (orchestrated by Liszt and/or Tchaikovsky) is based on the autograph edition of 1892, not the Schirmer edition of 1909 which has numerous abridgements and deviations from the autograph. On whether these were made as the result of Menter's second thoughts, whether or not they are improvements or valid, and exactly what differences there are between the two versions, Mr Hoteev is silent.

So much for the scholarship. What about the music-making? Yes, you've guessed. Like so many scholar-pianists, Hoteev is unable to set the pulse racing or the senses tingling in music that is supposed to do just that. He is far more concerned with reproducing an idea of an interpretation than playing with genuine inspiration or (if he had any) musical imagination. While observing the dynamic and tempo markings of which the booklet makes so much, he fails to respond to many of Tchaikovsky's other indications, the most glaring and obvious example being the Allegro vivace assai section [subsequently changed to Prestissimo, Ed.] of the second movement of the First Concerto (track 2 at 3:13). Not only does Hoteev take this at practice tempo but he ignores the composer's request to play pianissimo and leggierissimo, thus quite destroying the raison d'etre of Tchaikovsky's 'scherzo'. The final movement's Allegro con fuoco is not so much a blazing bonfire as a charcoal-brick barbecue. I could go on but in fact all the tempos are on the lumbering side. Only technical limitations or a perverse interpretative rationale could allow him to adopt these speeds and if Hoteev can't be trusted with undisputed markings then it throws doubts on the whole enterprise. (Of course, speed isn't everything, but to give you some idea of the difference between this new recording and others, the first movement of Concerto No 3 with Werner Haas lasts 15:19 while Hoteev takes 21:11; in the first movement of No 2, Pletnev steams in at 19:46 - Hoteev limps home in 26:40.) Maybe what he does is an attempt to emphasise Professor Korabelnikova's contention that Tchaikovsky is not 'naive, simple and popular,' and to lend the 'brilliant composer' some of the Teutonic gravitas of Wagner and Mahler. If so, instead of nobility or grandeur or whatever else Hoteev sought to bring to these marvellous scores, it all makes for a dull and unrewarding experience after Gilels or Richter in the First Concerto (let alone Horowitz), Pletnev or Cherkassky in the Second, Gary Graffman in No 2 and the first movement of No 3, or the under-rated Werner Haas in his 1971 recordings of all the works here (with the exceptions of the brief Allegro in C minor and the then undiscovered Hungarian Concerto; for the latter, turn to the world premiere recording from 1983 with Cyprien Katsaris and the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy). And, I'm sorry, but I would rather trust in the musical gifts and judgements of Messrs Richter, Pletnev and Horowitz and the others mentioned above than the well-meaning but misguided Mr Hoteev.

© Jeremy Nicholas, March 26th 1999

A Knot Garden, Oh! Calcutta! era ago, hours of practising behind me, years of learning to come, I read James Friskin's Music & Letters essay, 'The Text of Tchaikovsky's B flat minor Concerto' (April 1969). What he had to say about the 1874-75 original, the 1879 Dannreuther-enriched second printing and the 1889/90 revision on which Tchaikovsky consulted Siloti, was a revelation - and still is. It's in their treatment of the opening, of course, that, audio-physically, the first and last editions differ the most dramatically. On the one hand, favoured by the late Malcolm Frager, delicate, harp-spread forte chords across four-and-a-half octaves. On the other, in the arsenal of every red-blooded romantic of the age, plunging, hammer-blow fortissimo ones across six-and-a-bit. 'Unabridged Original Versions' flash KOCH Schwann, gold-leaf on black. In suspense I wait. What do I hear? No! Surely not! All those familiar old fistfuls - Siloti's or whose we'll never know - tiring their way up the keyboard? Original Version? Perhaps Andrej or Andrey (the inlay cards, pressings and accompanying booklet can't seem to agree on a consistent spelling) would be so kind as to let us in on his definition of the word. Even the 1879 compromise quoted specifically in his sources doesn't get a look in here. 'The authentic sound of this great music ... the recording is a stroke of luck and a delight,' cries Lyudmila. 'The discoverer of the original Tchaikovsky,' fawns Polina. Well, someone out there likes it anyway. Does New Russian art know a thing or two Cold War Red artistry missed?

© Ates Orga, March 26th 1999

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Jeremy Nicholas

Jeremy Nicholas is an actor, writer, broadcaster and composer. He was nominated for an Olivier Award for his solo performance of Three Men In A Boat and won a Sony Radio Gold Award for the best speech and music programme of 1996. Apart from his own radio shows for the BBC, he has starred in numerous television series, and has written the music for many television and stage productions, as well as countless songs for BBC Radio 4's Stop the Week. He is the author of the Classic FM Guide to Classical Music (Pavilion), The Beginner's Guide to Opera (Ebury), and Godowsky - The Pianists' Pianist (APR) - the definitive biography, with a foreword by Jorge Bolet (1989).