The best Tchaikovsky conductor is 92 today

The best Tchaikovsky conductor is 92 today

Orchestras

norman lebrecht

August 05, 2024

Happy birthday to People’s Artist of the USSR, artistic director and principal conductor of the Tchaikovsky Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Fedoseyev.

All round, the best Tchaikovsky conductor of his time.

Certainly in the ballets and operas, arguably in most of the symphonies

He has concerts coming up on September 19 at the Zaryadye Hall and on October 10 at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.

Comments

  • Philipp Lord Chandos says:

    But not as great as Rozhdestvensky.

  • Guy says:

    I have always loved his old recording of Sergei Taneyev’s 2nd Symphony. Not the best sound in a 70’s Russian recording, but an energetic performance.

    • Herbie G says:

      You and me, Guy. Some of these recordings sounded as if they were made in the municpal swimming pool and the braying brass immediately revealed their Soviet provenance – but what exciting performances!

  • professional musician says:

    The best Tchaikovsky conductor? LOL….

  • J Barcelo says:

    The “best” Tchaikovsky conductor? Any conductor like Fedoseyev who so blatantly disregards a score like the Manfred Symphony is pretty low down on my list. There are many conductors who are better in the symphonies: Muti, Mehta, Maazel, Karajan, Svetlanov, Rostropovich, Temirkanov…heck, even Masur is better. The ballets? Fedoseyev is outclassed by Bonynge, Dorati, Ansermet, Ozawa, and maybe even Neeme Jarvi. The operas: I don’t know. It’s not like other than the two famous ones anyone does them. Maybe Fedoseyev is great in a live concert but on records there are many better.

  • Frank says:

    ‘greatest Tchaikovsky conductor’ sounds a bit like ‘excellent hamburger flipper.’
    In the USSR, and later in Russia, artists were pegged in their perceived specialities and that’s what they pretty much did all their lives.
    That’s why Nurejev and Baryshnikov fles to the west.

  • Herbie G says:

    A fine and underrated conductor, for sure. But does he need to be dubbed ‘the best Tchaikovsky conductor of his time’ to wish him well on this special occasion? ‘His time’ would be from about 1960 to the present day. This would include Mravinsky, Previn, Dorati, Ormandy, Markevitch and Svetlanov, to mention only a few. All of these have distinguished themselves for outstanding Tchaikovsky performances and all could be candidates for the ultimate accolade. It’s a matter of personal opinion.

    What is beyond doubt is the breadth of his repertoire – he has recorded dozens of fine works by second-rank (not second-rate!) composers for Melodiya, which a’ppeared on the Olympia label in the halcyon days of CDs.

    That being said, happy birthday Vladimir!

  • Philipp Lord Chandos says:

    Mariss?

  • KANANPOIKA says:

    There are three inevitable things in life: Death, Taxes…and
    Tchaikovsky….

  • Philipp Lord Chandos says:

    Nevertheless, Happy Birthday!

  • Adam says:

    Why Norman isn’t calling him a Putin’s puppet and his regime supporter? Fedoseyev participated in Putin-Gergiev controlled Tchaikovsky Competition, stays in Russia, and in his book claims the superiority of Russian music over that of other nations’. Why the double standards?

    • John Borstlap says:

      If Mr Fedoseyev indeed made that ridiculous soviet claim, then he can be safely categorized as crazy like all the other insane Russians that appear to run the country.

  • Willem Philips says:

    Delusional thinking

  • Peter2024 says:

    He is actually 92 this year. He was born in 1932.

  • Observing2 says:

    Norman, why the double standards with Russian musicians? You criticise some for being Putin puppets, but not Fedoseyev who is viewed like Gergiev. Yet Gergiev takes the flak, and Fedoseyev is spared.

    Why?

    • norman lebrecht says:

      Because he’s a throwback Soviet hack who knows no better.

      • Observing2 says:

        Well, he’s no less complacent to the war than Gergiev, Netrebko, Matsuev etc.

        So you don’t have a valid point.

        Either include Fedoseyev in the tirade against Russian musicians, or better still, stop the tirade altogether and let them get on with their musical lives.

        Otherwise, this just screams double standards and hypocrisy.

      • LegalEagle says:

        … ‘a throwback Soviet hack who knows no better’…. yet you use him as fodder for your pages and wish him a happy birthday???

    • Roland says:

      You really think a 90+ year old man should leave his fatherland as sign of protest against the war?? Just imagine you would be 90 years old ….

  • Neville says:

    I heard him conduct a butchered version of the Manfred Symphony in Vilnius. No organ. During the interval the audience of locals promenaded around the venue showing off their finery. It was surreal.

    • Herbie G says:

      Was it his fault that he had no organ?

      • professional musician says:

        No, he did the terrible Svetlanov arrangement, which, apart from a disfiguring huge cut in the finale and some crass reorchestrations, omits the ending with the organ and replaces it by the coda of the 1st mvt.

  • Roger Rocco says:

    Happy Birthday maestro!

  • Grr Man says:

    Putin will grab you for espionage if you go there to attend a performance.

  • Roland says:

    There is no best Tchaikovsky conductor!!! Why do we always have to make a compeltition which performance or recording of top orchestras or conductors is worse or better? It is ridiculous and wrong!!! Why should a Fedoseyev recording be better than any Jansons, Järvi, Rozhdestvrnsky, Svetlanov, Gergiev reading? What are the criterias??? There are NONE. Just your emotion how you feel the music. And your emotion is only subjective!!! All these wonderful recordings are not made for a competition like the ESC or for charts,, so let’s stop judging them, but simply enjoy them.

  • Mark Mortimer says:

    With so many useless ‘girl’ conductors getting up there & butchering Tchaikovsky- Fedoseyev is like a final tonic of his generation.

    • professional musician says:

      Misogonyst crap…Thank God he is the final topic of his generation…A ” useless” , mediocre musician, he butchered the Tchaik 6 i played under him a few years ago..Incoherent, dull, heavy handed, soggy. And he didn´t show or say anything, just going listlessly through the motions. The Mussorgsky song cycle before the interval was even worse…I have played under several”girl ” conductors who were a thousand times better. The

  • Daniel says:

    “Best Tschaikovsky conductor”? Says who??

  • Rob says:

    Nobody has come anywhere near Dorati’s LSO Tchaikovsky 4, in my opinion. Maybe Szell.

    Never rated Fedoseyev, have the impression it’s always been more about him than the music. Flabby interpretations.

  • Nurhan Arman says:

    I wish a very happy birthday to Maestro Fedoseyev. He is an excellent conductor. Labeling as ‘best this, best that’ or “Putin’s pianist, Putin’s maestro” etc. should not be a routine in a classical music blog ran by a music critic.

    For the Tchaikovsky symphonies my heart is with Mravinsky/Leningrad set.

    • Herbie G says:

      With you all the way. Mravinsky’s Leningrad performances are incandescent. It’s amazing how much adrenalin is released when each player knows that one wrong note will result in a spell in the gulag!

  • Player says:

    Fedoseyev was much admired by Carlos Kleiber, IIRC.

  • Philipp Lord Chandos of Bis says:

    Thinking about it, for me, Neeme Järvi is one of the great living Tchaikovsky champions. A bit on the swift side occasionally, he gets things just right in all the ballets, tone poems, symphonies, suites, operas, concertos and also in the rarely recorded gems like the Snow Maiden and the reconstructed 7th Symphony.

    Which other conductor has recorded all of Tchaikowsky in such good quality?

  • Uncle Sam says:

    I submit he was great at conducting Sviridov’s “Snowstorm” (aka “Blizzard”). Those recordings from the mid-1970s on the Melodia label (first link) truly deserve, IMHO, to be considered as the reference ones. But even some 45+ years later (second link) the venerable Maestro and his fine orchestra still have some magic left playing that thing, don’t they?

    1975 or so:
    https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Sviridov%3A+The+Blizzard+Provided+to+YouTube+by+JSC+%22Firma+Melodiya%22

    2021 or so:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecjfAqPDXm4

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