Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - The Snow Maiden (Kristjan Järvi)

Information

Composer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

• The Snow Maiden, Op. 12 (incidental music to Ostrovsky's play)

Vsevolod Grivnov, mezzo-soprano

Annely Peebo, tenor

Leipzig Radio Choir & Symphony Orchestra

Kristjan Järvi, conductor

Date: 2015

Label: Sony Classical

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Review

It must be difficult being a young Järvi. Whenever conducting brothers Paavo and Kristjan record a new disc, there’s every likelihood that dad – Neeme – got there first, even in rarer repertoire. Järvi Snr is surely one of the most-recorded artists in the classical music business, so now that Kristjan sets down Tchaikovsky’s complete incidental music for The Snow Maiden, his father’s 1994 Chandos recording acts as a natural point of reference.

Tchaikovsky’s music accompanied a new play by Ostrovsky drawing on the old Russian fairy-tale of Snegurochka. ‘It is one of my favourite offspring,’ Tchaikovsky wrote to Nadezhda von Meck. ‘I think the happy spring-like mood with which I was filled at the time must be audible in the music.’ He wasn’t wrong. It is a delectable score, full of unbroken sunshine, composed in the spring of 1873. Tchaikovsky had just edited a folksong collection published by Vasily Prokunin and he based some of his Snow Maiden score on folk tunes.

Kristjan Järvi’s account is excellent. There is a welcome warmth to the MDR Leipzig strings, recorded in concert. He is generally a smidgen faster than Järvi Snr in most numbers. Highlights include an exhilarating ‘Dance of the Tumblers’, every bit as brilliant as Rimsky-Korsakov’s in his operatic version of the tale. He sculpts the little andantino melodrama (tr 11) with wistful care and Tsar Berendey’s March bustles along. Vsevolod Grivnov provides tenorial heft, while mezzo Annely Peebo lends plenty of character to Lel’s songs; as in the Chandos recording, both versions of Lel’s Third Song are included.

Sony’s bright recording captures the sunshine in the score. The booklet contains a good synopsis of the plot but there are no texts to the 14 vocal numbers – a minor blip to an otherwise joyous recording.

— Mark Pullinger

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Romantic Russian composer. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, his First Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, the Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, several symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin. Despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovsky's life was punctuated by personal crises and depression.

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Kristjan Järvi (born 13 June 1972) is an Estonian American conductor and composer. Born in Tallinn, Estonia, he is the younger son of the conductor Neeme Järvi and brother of conductor Paavo Järvi. Kristjan studied piano at the Manhattan School of Music and conducting at the University of Michigan. He was Chief Conductor and Music Director of NorrlandsOperan (2000–2004), the Tonkünstler Orchestra (2004–2009), and the MDR (Leipzig Radio) Symphony Orchestra (2012–2018). As a recording artist Järvi has more than 60 albums to his credit. He is also active as a composer and has composed many works in modern style.

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