Symphony No 4 – 475 6316, SACD 475 6196
Symphony No 5 – 475 6718
Symphony No 6 – 475 6317, SACD 475 6197

One of the most surprising yet successful musical partnerships of the past ten years has been that between Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and the Vienna Philharmonic. Since Gergiev first conducted the orchestra in 1997, in a performance of Boris Godunov at the Salzburg Festival, they have not only reunited at subsequent Festivals but also toured together and made several live recordings. It seems appropriate that their first recording was of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, a work in which the composer consciously blended the rigorous structure and cogency of the great German symphonic tradition with his own flair for colourful orchestral writing and melodic charm - the very qualities that maestro and orchestra could fully reveal. That powerful live recording is now being joined by new live recordings from the same forces of Tchaikovsky's Fourth and Sixth symphonies.

Tchaikovsky's last three symphonies, composed respectively in 1878, 1888 and 1893, have been among the most strongly contested works in the standard repertory. Their common theme of Fate - explicitly stated both in Tchaikovsky's compositional sketches and in his letters to his patroness Madame von Meck - has polarised opinion: on one side are those scholars, such as Professor David Brown, who have argued that they are among the most original and outstandingly crafted works in symphonic literature; others have seen them as mere vessels of Tchaikovsky's turbulent emotions, sometimes degenerating into ill-disciplined bouts of hysteria and self pity. Gergiev has little time for such notions: 'It is an obvious thing to say, but Tchaikovsky was a genius, a great composer. He was a great composer of the opera - think of *Eugene Onegin* or *Queen of Spades*; of the ballet - think of *Nutcracker* or *Sleeping Beauty*; and he was a great composer of orchestral music. There is no one thing that he did in those three symphonies; he did something different each time.'

Indeed, even if one insists on their shared theme, their outcomes are very different: while the Fourth seems to suggest that the everyday joy of life goes on notwithstanding fate, the Fifth seems to embrace fate as a natural, sometimes painful but necessary part of life, and the Sixth on the contrary makes fate an implacable nemesis, finally sinking away into a profound and disturbing silence. Gergiev most memorably demonstrated this at a concert in aid of Beslan held last November at London's Coliseum: at Gergiev's request, the concert ended with no applause, leaving the music's candidly bleak ending to resonate unimpeded.

For Gergiev, it is a matter of pride that over the last few years his recordings have been almost exclusively made at live concerts. As he points out, live recordings are inevitably 'more truthful' than studio recordings which, all too often, are cosmetic creations in pursuit of a 'perfect' or idealised performance: 'I don't deny that there are great opportunities for artists to make good recordings in the studio; but there's also no denial that there are many recordings of performances made in public which, because of the energy that's there, are often more valid, more exciting 10 or 20 years later than is the case with studio recordings.'

So important is the experience of performing music before an audience that Gergiev, when preparing opera productions at St Petersburg, will present concert performances in order to give his players and soloists 'some oxygen' before preparing a full-scale production: 'I believe the audience is an important and necessary element of any performance. A concert means to me a performance to the public. And what excites me is to go and try to do something slightly different from with what we did yesterday; it's another live performance which means another chance - it's another creative moment of your life.'

Gergiev clearly regards his live recordings as fleeting events which happen to have been captured for posterity. In that light, his new recording of the Sixth Symphony bears a particular burden of association; for it was made last year on September 3, the day when news broke of the massacre by terrorists of young children at School Number One in Beslan. Gergiev, who has a personal tie to the region, having grown up and studied music in Vladikavkaz just 20 kilometres away, is plainly reluctant, or perhaps simply unable, to go into any detail about that recording: 'it was one of the worst days of my life. It was pure coincidence that I did the Tchaikovsky Six that day: it had been planned a year in advance, that I should record that symphony live on that day. But I didn't know what to do. I really didn't know if I could go ahead and perform that work on that day: not to perform it would have caused me terrible pain, and to perform it would be painful.'

So given his strongly ambivalent feelings, why did Gergiev go ahead? 'I think there is a strength in the human spirit, which enables us to go on even when we are faced with such a tragedy. I think something like that made me go ahead and conduct that performance. I did not intend to make a political statement or to make any kind of statement by doing that performance. But it seemed, and many people agree about this, that Tchaikovsky's last symphony was an appropriate choice for this terrible event. I cannot tell you anything about that performance, because I don't remember anything about it. I just did the performance I could at that time.'

In any case, Gergiev clearly feels that these live performances should speak for themselves: 'I would not like to say anything specific about each of those recordings. I will just say they record an ongoing friendship between me and the Vienna Philharmonic. My career has been about making friendships, and the greatest friends are the great masterpieces which we perform.'