Igor Markevitch & London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky: The Symphonies & Manfred (2016) [Hi-Res]

Tchaikovsky began sketching his first Symphony in March 1866, encouraged by the favourable reception given to his refurbished Overture in F when it was performed in Moscow under Nikolai Rubinstein.

Progress, however, was very slow, and as a result of working habitually until very late at night as well as in the daytime, it was not long before he suffered a nervous breakdown; in fact his doctor told him that he had only narrowly escaped madness. He then submitted the unfinished score to two of his former teachers at the St Petersburg Conservatoire, Anton Rubinstein and Nicholas Zaremba, in the hope that they might recommend it for performance to the Russian Musical Society in St Petersburg. All he received for his pains was a devastating list of criticisms and a demand for numerous revisions, which he reluctantly agreed to undertake. The third movement (a transcription of a movement in an early — and only posthumously published — piano sonata) was played on its own in Moscow on 22 December, and the second and third were given in St Petersburg in February 1867 (after Anton Rubinstein had rejected Tchaikovsky’s score for the second time), though their reception was no more than lukewarm. The first complete performance of the Symphony did not take place until 15 November 1868, when Nikolai Rubinstein conducted it in Moscow for the Russian Musical Society. Paradoxically, it was a tremendous success; the audience clamoured for the composer, who finally appeared in a state of extreme embarrassment, in a crumpled suit and squeezing his hat in his hands. It is interesting to note that by this time Tchaikovsky had removed the passages that he had previously substituted in order to satisfy the demands of Anton Rubinstein and Zaremba, and that except for the first movement’s second subject — which he had changed at Zaremba’s insistence, and of which he could no longer remember or reconstruct the original version — the symphony was as he had first planned it. …

London Symphony Orchestra
Igor Markevitch, conductor

Digitally remastered