Tchaikovsky - Romeo and Juliet & Hamlet - Pentatone: PTC5186330 - download

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The best music, in the Entr'actes, comes from elsewhere - namely a much more distinguished stage project, The Snow Maiden, the alla tedesca of the Third Symphony and the rather lovely Elegy in... — BBC Music Magazine, February 2009, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 10th Nov 2008
Catalogue No: PTC5186330
Label: Pentatone
Length: 59 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

March 2009

Disc of the Month

Tchaikovsky: Hamlet, Op. 67

Work length43:08

$19.00

$24.70

$33.25

Maxim Mikhailov (bass), Tatiana Monogarova (soprano)
Russian National Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski

Overture

Track length9:09

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Act I Scene 1: Melodrame: First appearance of Ghost

Track length1:13

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act I Scene 4: Fanfare: A Flourish of Trumpets

Track length0:25

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act I Scene 4: Melodrame: Appearance of Ghost to Hamlet

Track length0:40

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act I Scene 5: Melodrame: The Ghost tells Hamlet of his father's murder

Track length3:26

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act II: Entr'acte: Prelude to Scene 1 and first appearance in the play of Ophelia

Track length2:55

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act II Scene 2: Fanfare: The Dumb Show enters

Track length0:25

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act II Scene 2: Fanfare: A Room in the Castle - Flourish

Track length0:27

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act III: Entr'acte: Prelude to Scene 1 which features Hamlet's soliloquy

Track length3:04

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act III Scene 2: Melodrame: The Players enact the Scene of the Poisoning

Track length2:21

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act IV: Entr'acte: Prelude to Scene 1 - A Room in the Castle

Track length7:38

$2.00

$2.60

$3.50

Act IV Scene 5: Scene d'Ophelie: Elsinore - Ophelia's Mad Scene

Track length2:19

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act IV Scene 5: Deuxieme scene d'Ophelie: Re-enter Ophelia, fantastically dressed with straws and flowers

Track length2:26

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act V: Entr'acte: Prelude to Scene 1 - A Churchyard

Track length4:16

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act V Scene 1: Chant du Fossoyeur

Track length1:17

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act V Scene 2: Fanfare: Trumpets sound

Track length0:27

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Act V Scene 2: Marche finale

Track length0:40

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Tchaikovsky: Romeo & Juliet - Fantasy Overture

Work length16:32

$4.00

$5.15

$7.00

Russian National Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski

Romeo and Juliet (original 1869 version)

Track length16:32

$4.00

$5.15

$7.00

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Any recording on PentaTone with Vladimir Jurowski must be regarded as an event and this release certainly lives up to its promise. Russian conductor and Russian orchestra play this astounding music with full romantic panache!

Reviews

February 2009

The best music, in the Entr'actes, comes from elsewhere - namely a much more distinguished stage project, The Snow Maiden, the alla tedesca of the Third Symphony and the rather lovely Elegy in Honour of Ivan Samarin. Jurowski seems to care here especially for the latter. The rest is played with spirit by a Russian National Orchestral sounding in increasingly better shape - it still has some way to go - and Ophelia's music is affectingly sung by the lovely lyric soprano Tatiani Monogarova.

2010

At first glance this might look like the traditional pairing of Tchaikovsky's two fantasy overtures – but you might have known that Vladimir Jurowski was likely to be more inquisitive than that. In 1891 a complete stage performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet took place in St Peters- burg with music by Tchaikovsky. His fantasy overture, written for a charity event three years earlier, was heard again, this time filleted to roughly half its original length and reduced in scoring to the requirements of a theatre orchestra.
The results are fascinating, not least for the ingenuity of Tchaikovsky's cut-and-paste job, jump-cutting now with renewed urgency. Of course, one misses the symphonic weight of the original. The effect is more muted here, the scale diminished so as not to pre-empt that moment in the actual drama. But Ophelia is more than ever at the heart of the piece, her plaintive oboe melody very much dominating this version and exquisitely played – as is everything – by the Russian National Orchestra, whose refinement has opened a new chapter in Russian orchestral playing. Ophelia's first entrance, incidentally, is none other than the graceful 'Alla tedesca' second movement of Tchaikovsky's Third Symphony, the Polish.
How's that for recycling? And there's more with the Prelude to Act 4 scene 1, a poignant string elegy turned on wistful arabesques. That is one of the more substantial of the 16 clips and touchingly foreshadows Ophelia's tragedy. She – the lovely Tatiana Monogarova – has a twopart Mad Scene or 'melodrama' where the spoken lines lend a stark reality to her delusions.
Those who know the original 1869 version of the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture will be aware that it's another example of how much more interesting, though not necessarily better, a composer's first thoughts can be. Fascinating is the earlier premonition of the great love theme and the way Tchaikovsky quite literally tosses it about in the more radical and certainly more violent development of the fight music: all gone in the revision! Jurowski savours the differences and makes capital of the anomalies. Very exciting.

March 2009

Think you know your Tchaikovsky? Think again…..Hamlet gives us a glimpse into a composer with a theatre director’s sensibility – he knows when to lend urgency to the players without overwhelming
them, the music heightening but never upstaging….Jurowski and his forces offer playing of drive and passion.

The Independent on Sunday 14th December 2008

Vladimir Jurowski’s highly focused conducting makes Tchaikovsky’s overture and incidental music for ‘Hamlet’ leap off the page. A galvanised Russian orchestra displays blistering strings, pleasingly
punchy woodwind…a must-buy disc.

Tchaikovsky - Romeo and Juliet & Hamlet

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