Track Listing

1. 1812 -- Festival Overture, for orchestra in E flat major, Op. 49
2. Capriccio Italien, for orchestra (or piano, 4 hands), Op. 45
3. Romeo and Juliet, fantasy-overture for orchestra in B minor (3 versions): Fantasy Overture
4. Slavonic March, for orchestra, Op. 31

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #248699 in Music
• Released on: 1990-10-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Customer Reviews

Good Value on the 1812 and a Very Good Romeo
When Dorati signed on to become Detroit's newest musical director in 1978, he promised to get the symphony recording again. Straightaway he brought in London/Decca to lay down some initial tracks. The engineers discovered a decaying old movie theater downtown (the so-called "United Artists Auditorium") that had excellent acoustics for recording. Good businessman that he always was, Dorati figured he could repeat the success he had with Mercury many years ago by re-recording the "1812." They pulled out all the stops, complete with recording a brand-new reproduction of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, the bells of Washington, DC's National Cathedral, and genuine Civil War cannon, all superimposed later in the editing process. The end result was another sonic blockbuster, of course, although it never sold as many copies as Dorati or the DSO wished. Here it is now, along with the accompanying fillers of "Capriccio Italien" and "Marche Slave" that were on the original LP, all on an attractively priced budget CD with great remastered end-of-analog era sound. Dorati's interpretations of the scores are as good as ever, but there are, sad to say, a few measures where the DSO sounds a bit ragged. Still, it's a good value.

And to get the CD up to 60 minutes, London has added an earlier (1974) Dorati/National Symphony (Washington, DC) recording from his years of being their director. Now here's a discovery! This recording of Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" is among the finest I have ever heard. There's clarity, there's commitment, and there's a forward driving force that's appropriately paced in all but one brief passage where it sounded a bit peremptory. This may be the "Romeo" to make you forget you heard it a million times!

Great CD, tempos are off, though.
This a good CD of Tchaikovsky's popular works. The 1812 Overture is too slow for me, but still good. Capriccio Italian is a little bit too fast for me, but still good. Then there's Romeo and Juliet. That song is where the four stars come in. It is an excellent redcording of that song. The final work on this disc is Marche Slav, which is good. So, buy this CD just for Romeo & Juliet, and just maybe you'll like the other songs as well.

Mr. Dorati, you are no Bernstein!
This is some of my favorite of all classical music. It has teeth, it has power, it is filled with emotion. Conducted and performed correctly it will make your blood run swiftly and at the same time, it will bring tears to your eyes! However, Tchaikovsky publicly stated that he didn't feel anyone would really enjoy the 1812 Overture and the Marche Slave because he filled these works with all his hatred for the French after the defeat of Napoleon's army in the War of 1812. He couldn't have been more wrong. Today, these two pieces are some of the most popular and celebrated pieces of music ever written! And rightfully so. Indeed, the 1812 Overture, for example, represents the epitome of the classical masterpiece.

Now, this must be made clear: Antal Dorati has done an absolutely horrific job of recreating this rich, bold and powerful music. The lion has been captured and reduced in nature to the common house cat. Mr. Dorati has somehow pulled the teeth of the beast, nay, neutered it, in fact, and left it laying helplessly, whimpering in the corner of its dark, damp, dirty little cage. The familiar listener will feel robbed at the absence of emotion, cheated by the seemingly paint-by-the-numbers, academic approach with which Mr. Dorati presents some of Tchaikovsky's greatest work. In fact, I would greatly underestimate the matter by saying that Mr. Dorati's effort is sophomoric at best. The honorable members of the Detroit Symphony must have wept in despair when they heard how they had taken part in shaving the mane of this magnificent lion!

The tempo is slow. The canon explosions all sound the same and are precisely on tempo, even though they weren't written that way. The sharp edges are rounded and the music is soft. This music is akin to Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' orchestrated and softly playing over the loudspeaker in a bank building elevator.

But fear not, my fiends! In order to experience the grandeur of the untamed lion, the glory and the spirit and the true power of the music into which Tchaikovsky poured his very soul, one should seek Tchaikovsky as performed by The New York Symphony and conducted by, who else? The masterful, Mr. Leonard Bernstein.