ME 213 Rowicki Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 4

Rowicki conducts Tchaikovsky SYMPHONY NO 4

SLEEPING BEAUTY, Ballet Suite

Warsaw Philharmonic

Rowicki’s Polskie Nagranie studio recording on LP of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony does not seem to have been distributed outside Poland and we could not find any reviews on the Internet. However, there are reviews of live per- formances of this work and we give short extracts below:

“…The closing work on the program was the Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony, and I don’t think anyone, me least of all, could have anticipated the sheer visceral excitement of the performance we heard that night. I remember the couple in front of me rocking back and forth as if buffet- ed by storm winds. The last movement began with a thunderclap that made us all jump in our seats, and then main- tained a breathless momentum through- out. At the end, we all leapt to our feet

shouting at the top of our lungs. That kind of playing deserved no less. At the time, it was the greatest performance of the symphony I’d ever heard…”

Max Westler, Enjoy the Music.com, reminiscence of the Chicago concert of the early 1970s

“…The Tchaikovsky [Fourth] is treated to a performance which can best be described as fearless. It is even faster than Mravinsky and comes over as very exciting but slightly wayward in a manner that reminded me of Constantin Silvestri, another fine and individual Tchaikovsky conductor. By the end it is as much as one can do not to leap to one’s feet and cheer along with the audi- ence…”

David Billinge, Musicweb International, review of the London concert of 7 April 1967, now available on CD

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