Herbert von Karajan - Tchaikovsky: The 6 Symphonies

Three SHM Single Layer SACDs

The Berliner Philharmoniker's long and distinguished tradition of Tchaikovsky performance can be traced back to their founding years. Tchaikovsky himself knew and admired the orchestra's two earliest principal conductors Hans von Bülow and Artur Nikisch. Their inspired advocacy of his music — the last three symphonies in particular — would be continued by their similarly dedicated and charismatic successors Wilhelm Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan.

The 20-year-old Karajan included Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony in his very first professional concert in Salzburg in January 1929. The Pathétique Symphony followed in Ulm in 1933. He told his parents, "When it was all over, the audience sat as if dead for ten seconds, then bawled their approval as if at a football match." In 1939, the year after his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Karajan recorded the Pathétique with the orchestra. The artistic self-possession he displayed in his handling of both the music and the orchestra was widely noted at the time. By now he also had in his repertoire the tragic yet electrifying Fourth Symphony, a work of which he would become one of the great interpreters.