Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado - Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture, Slavonic March, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest (1991)

Although I am rather a fan of early music than of the romantic repertoire, I couldn't resist this collection of pieces that are among the best-known and best-loved that Tchaikovsky ever wrote and that had been familiar to me from the radio from childhood. And I was certainly not disappointed, for although the recordings are fairly old, in their digitalized version they capture fairly brilliantly all that is so wonderful about Tchaikovsky with his tremendous gift of orchestration and his ability to mix wistfulness with blood-rushing excitement. His Romeo and Juliet Overture is not really programmatic but manages to capture ideally the mood of tragic conflict contained in Shakespeare's drama, concluding appropriately with a funeral march. The 1812 Overture appears to manage here without real cannons, but there are enough fireworks in Haitink's interpretation which never fails to thrill me (and to cause my wife to rush in to the room telling me to turn the volume down!). The Capriccio italien and the Slavic March are equally popular and brilliant with their use of easily recognizable themes and of magnificent brass playing. The Concertgebouw, where presumably these recordings were made, is one of the world's foremost concert halls with a famous acoustic, and the Philips engineers have captured all these pieces in life-sized stereo, making it almost imperative to listen to this in front of loudspeakers standing wide enough apart to create the illusion of being in the front row.