Tchaikovsky - Manfred Symphony

The Guardian 80

Czech PO/Bychkov
(Decca)

Semyon Bychkov began his self-styled Tchaikovsky Project last autumn with a series of concerts in London with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the initial release in a sequence of recordings with the Czech Philharmonic. That first disc – of the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture and the Sixth Symphony – was a mixed bag, sometimes thrilling, sometimes indulgently mannered, but its successor, devoted to Tchaikovsky’s great programmatic symphony based upon Byron’s dramatic poem, is far more consistently impressive.

The epic expansiveness of the Manfred Symphony suits Bychkov’s operatic tendencies perfectly. He clearly relishes the music’s moments of grandeur, over-the-top rhetoric and dramatic coups, and the Czech orchestra responds with playing of tremendous character. The wonderfully pungent bassoon solo early in the first movement sets the standard for all the vivid woodwind playing that follows, and even in the most massive climaxes the sound is never coarse or overbearing. For once the fugue actually ratchets up the tension of the finale rather than dispersing it, though perhaps the subsequent intervention of the organ delivers less of a dramatic blow than it can in some performances.