Petrenko is up there with the best & very well recorded, but the Mravinsky is a white hot, edge or your seat performance (the 4th & 5th too), not to be missed.
Good news for Tchaikovsky fans, Reference Recordings will soon release the Manfred Honeck/Pittsburgh Symphony 4th.
Qobuz has the 4th,5th,and 6th all from the Deutsche Grammophon originals on one recording according to the Digital Booklet that comes with it. 24/96 resolution. For those so inclined.
Do not listen to the Argerich. Made me want to jump in a trench.
Moved on to this sonata. It’s not a good piece of music, but a great pianist, preferably Russian, can raise it to considerable heights.
That includes Gilels of course, but I heard Igor Levit play it in a program before the Diabelli Variations, his recording of which established his international reputation. It was magnificent and it would be great if he would record it. The review is here:
I have those in a boxed LP set from way back. During the '70s a record club with the pretentious and not very accurate name “The International Preview Society” sold classical albums that were resourced old recordings from DGG, Philips and others. They took the Mravinsky/Leningrad set and put them in a new box. I got one, and have always loved both the performance and recording. As I mention in another post, it remains my touchstone when evaluating other’s versions.
After the BBC Symphony and Jack Liebeck recorded in the old (but superb) Maida Vale studios, here’s the BBC Philharmonic with a fabulous Shost 11 recorded at the newish Media City studio in Manchester.
There’s a dual layer SACD for all you audiophiles. The problem with such things, like the Liverpool Phil’s Shost 2/15 under Petrenko (on Naxos), is that the quiet bits are very quiet and you do sometimes have to reach for the volume control.
Someone recently impugned Naxos as budget of middling quality. Listen to the Petrenko and eat words.
About 4 years ago made one of my better investments when I acquired this set for $100USD. Countless hours of always fascinating, sometimes puzzling, sometimes jarring performances of an artist who displayed the courage of his convictions every time he sat down at the piano. Humming a bonus…
There’s a nice selection Medicitv classical music videos available free for Amazon Prime members, including several of of the Abbado/Lucerne Festival Orchestra Mahler symphonies.
There’s also a RCO Mahler Festival online on YouTube
Bought this a few years back. Some of the operas are complete with dialog (Pirates of Penzance) and some with no dialog (The Mikado). But, no matter; classic, tradition packed set.