Music

Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Michael Tumelty

five stars

IT’S a hackneyed thing to say, but Sunday afternoon’s Usher Hall concert by the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra had to be heard to be believed. I know the stuffing went out of Soviet orchestras when the USSR collapsed and the bands lost their life-support machine, with many musicians having to scrabble about. I don’t know if the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, formerly the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, was in any way a special case; but good Lord, is it ever a band in full bloom, with a horn section you’d want to kidnap, ransoming their mellifluous sound, a glorious woodwind team you’d want to keep in a cupboard and take out daily to remind you of the good things in life, and a string section of such burnished depth and gleaming polish you could bathe in the sheen.

And I don’t care if their conductor Vladimir Fedoseyev is 85 or 185. He has the full canister of conducting marbles, walks steadily, is absolutely the boss, doesn’t use a baton and has magic in his hands. The sound from the orchestra in their all-Tchaikovsky programme was astounding, with a glorious performance of Francesca da Rimini that revealed it to be a better piece, with infinitely more abstract character, than some conductors perceive, culminating in possibly the most unified, and definitely most analytical, account of the Fifth Symphony I have heard.

Fedoseyev’s a cracking accompanist too, keeping the band apace with Jennifer Pike’s delightful, sometimes impetuous account of the Violin Concerto, with a finale of such velocity it might have left a lesser conductor and band a few paces behind. Not this amazing crew. Wow.