It is no slight to
Christoph Eschenbach the conductor that his performance here of
Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony is a lesser achievement than
Christoph Eschenbach the pianist's performance here of the first half of
Tchaikovsky's The Seasons.
Eschenbach the conductor is a superb director. He knows how to mold a phrase, how to sculpt a sonority, how to shape a climax and how to bind a movement of disparate parts into a single organic whole.
Eschenbach the conductor is likewise a convincing interpreter. He knows that while
Tchaikovsky's Fifth may not be in the same aesthetic league as, say,
Beethoven's Fifth, it is still a worthy symphony in its own way with its own melodic charms, its own blazing colors, and its own highly histrionic dramatic style. Nor is it a slight to the
Philadelphia Orchestra, which plays with more passion, more power, and just as much polish for
Eschenbach than it ever did for
Wolfgang Sawallisch and
Riccardo Muti, its two previous music directors. But
Eschenbach was a pianist -- and a superlative pianist -- long before he took up the baton, and his playing here is wonderfully nuanced, warmly shaded, and completely enthralling, making more of these salon pieces than nearly any previous pianist. So while there have been many performances of
Tchaikovsky's Fifth to equal or surpass
Eschenbach's -- one thinks immediately of
Yevgeny Mravinsky's soul-searing performance with the razor-sharp Leningrad Philharmonic -- there has never been a performance of the first half of
Tchaikovsky's The Seasons to equal
Eschenbach's except
Sviatoslav Richter's -- and
Richter, being the idiosyncratic individualist that he was, never recorded all of The Seasons. In either work, Ondine's super audio sound is rich, deep, and full.