Anything conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos is always welcome, as far as my opinion counts. A titan of a musician but more importantly a pillar of decency, generosity, and honesty, Mitropoulos' interpretations are so individual and charged, that quite simply, there is no way to peg him into a category. What one gets with Mitropoulos is a well thought out performance that usually brims with an electricity that can not be explained by mere mortal! Here, we have two works that appeal to Mitropoulos' creativity and imagination: the Khachaturian Piano Concerto and the Pathetique Symphony of Tchaikovsky.
The Khachaturian concerto features Oscar Levant as soloist. Levant is one of those pianists whose star rose quite high during his time but today, he is mostly forgotten. In this concerto, he and Mitropoulos prove strong partners and they collaborate to make this music sound more interesting then it really is. For the most part, Khachaturian was a second rate composer, prone to effect over substance, and his work can fall to the banal in the wrong hands. Fortunately, here are two musicians that believe in this work and play it for what it is worth.
Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony is, of course, a whole other matter. Consider this: the Pathetique was the greatest Russian symphony for some 60 years until, I think, Shostakovich's 10th surpassed it for power, emotion, orchestration, and overall structural integrity. In Mitropoulos's hands, this masterpiece of Tchaikovsky's moves to another plane altogether. The emotion, the soul of Tchaikovsky, is exposed in its rawest, basest form. This is, quite simply, a totally organic experience that will tire you because it makes you completely focus on it for 40+ minutes. It just pulls you in; this is the magic of Dimitri Mitropoulos at his very finest.
The Khachaturian on this CBS Special Products disc dates from 1950 and the Odyssey issue of the Tchaikovsky was recorded in 1956.
DOWNLOAD KHACHATURIAN
DOWNLOAD TCHAIKOVSKY
