It is not going too far to say that British orchestral music has been fundamentally shaped in recent years by the work of expat Russian conductors, and there are signs that the same thing may be happening in Germany. An example is this release by the
NDR Radiophilharmonie
in Hamburg, with its newly named conductor,
Stanislav Kochanovsky
. One attraction of the Russians is that they have a somewhat different view of their own repertory than is prevalent in Western countries. Consider the four Orchestral Suites of
Tchaikovsky
, which are played only intermittently in the West but that reveal themselves as full-blown examples of
's thinking with some strong claims to be the beginnings of the neoclassical movement.
Kochanovsky
delivers a muscular performance of the
Orchestral Suite No. 3 in G major, Op. 55
, drawing clean sounds from the
NDR Radiophilarmonie
strings and leaving plenty of space for an exciting, high-energy theme-and-variations finale. Listening to this, one may wonder why this work isn't a concert standard everywhere. In the more popular
Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 24
,
is more restrained; some may want more colorful Spanish accents here, but again, the orchestral performance is very strong. This is
's recording debut with this orchestra, and it makes the listener look forward to hearing his takes on other repertory, Russian and non. ~ James Manheim