Conductor Serge Koussevitzky.
In Tuesday’s (7/23) New York Times, David Allen writes, “There is a passage in Serge Koussevitzky’s final recording of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony that some listeners might hear in horror, but others with a degree of awe. He recorded the piece in 1949 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, during the last weeks of his 25 years as its music director…. Tchaikovsky asks for a crescendo. Koussevitzky gives him that, but … fanfares blaze, entirely out of tempo, only to announce an unwritten silence…. Koussevitzky was hardly alone in taking liberties with the composer, but many other conductors have at least tried to contain the drama… In Koussevitzky’s hands, the effect is shattering. This Tchaikovsky Fourth is irresistible evidence of just how much he and the Boston Symphony achieved in their quarter of a century together…. According to the Boston Symphony, the orchestra gave 146 world premieres during his tenure, as well as another 86 U.S. premieres and many, many more performances of recent pieces he thought deserving … He led more than 300 works written by Americans…. The orchestra is celebrating 150 years since his birth and 100 years since his arrival in Boston with an array of online and physical exhibitions, as well concerts and events at Tanglewood, the summer festival and training center he forged in the Berkshires.”
