Tchaikovsky: Concertos Pour Piano N 1 & 2 – DENIS MATSUEV / MARIINSKY ORCHESTRA / VALERY GERGIEV (Hybrid SACD)
I doubt if you will ever hear [the B flat minor Concerto] more viscerally thrilling and sumptuously engineered than here. Listening to Matsuev and Gergiev is the aural equivalent of watching Federer and Nadal…If this isn’t the greatest performance on disc, it is certainly now my personal benchmark…Matsuev and Gergiev give a similarly blistering account of the G major Concerto. –GRAMOPHONE
Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos 4 & 5 – VALERY GERGIEV / MARIINSKY ORCHESTRA (2 CDS)
The enticement lies with the Fifth Symphony, which receives an overwhelming reading. Gergiev approaches the score with the abandon and Romantic fervor of Stokowski, Abendroth, and Koussevitzky, all of whom recorded touchstone versions of the Tchaikovsky Fifth. The first movement in particular displays interpretative freedom of the kind unheard of since the heyday of those conductors. Feeling his way from episode to episode, Gergiev responds with shifting mood and tempo. –FANFARE
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 – VALERY GERGIEV / MARIINSKY ORCHESTRA