This lovely and eloquent performance of the Sixth Symphony offers many fine moments, including an elegant second-movement quasi-waltz, a brilliantly played and dynamic march (a perfectly judged basic tempo and superb sonics don’t hurt here), and a deeply melancholy finale whose slight reticence only serves to heighten the pathos. What problems there are all concern the first-movement development and recapitulation, where Dohnanyi typically refuses to “let go” and pull out all the stops. Now Tchaikovsky certainly builds a certain measure of hysteria into his climaxes, and the control Dohnanyi exercises in the careful textural layering of the great exordium just before the return of the second subject in the recapitulation casts the music in an interesting and refreshingly different light. But while the build-up to the climax sounds marvelous, the final payoff just isn’t there, and this must necessarily compromise the conductor’s otherwise excellent vision of the piece. Good, then, but not as great as it surely could have been. The Polonaise from Eugen Onegin makes an appealing filler, but there was room on the disc for something much more substantial.
