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Was watching today the new DVD “Yevgeny Mravinsky: Soviet Conductor, Russian Aristocrat”. It is OK film, despite of very pore translation and sometime the commentaries of the wall but there is in there something absolutely phenomenal. Among many film’s footages of the Mravinsky conducting there is in there a little 10-15 seconds fragment of Mravinsky on podium finishing the latest bars of the Tchaikovsky Symphony #4. The performance was from 1957, when Mravinsky was in his very good shape (musically) and listening the recording of the “Allegro con fuoco” in the way HOW Mravinsky did it always stroked me that I would pay a lot to actual seeing it.  Mravinsky does not do it juts fast but insultingly fast. However, while the ending of the Tchaikovsky #4  rolling with a crazy Russki velocity the Mravinsky orchestra maintain so standing control and so remarkable integrity as if they play a Lohengrin  prelude for the first act. I always wondered what kind commands and what king messages Mravinsky might send to his players….

This 10-15 seconds fragment from 1957 is stunning. Mravinsky is so precise, so eloquent, so “abstract” but so clearly descriptive that I hardly ever expected that “it” might be this way. I was watching this fragment a dozens times today feel that ONLY those 10 seconds of Mravinsky 1957 leading the Leningrad Philharmonic in the last movement of the Tchaikovsky #4 well worth each single penny for the cost of the entire DVD…  The very same Orchestra on the same DVD during their 1971 play on London, lead by Gennady Rozhestvensky sound quite badly and the Rozhestvensky even looks like an idiot contacting the same finale.

I' only sorry that Rob Sibie did not live long enough to see this Mravinsky 10 seconds footage…

Rgs,
Romy the caT

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