Tchaikovsky “Manfred“ Symphony - Finale (Soviet version) - Temirkanov conducts

Tchaikovsky’s “Manfred“ Symphony is a four-movement programmatic work inspired by Lord Byron’s poem of the same name. It is the composer’s largest symphony both in length and instrumentation and has sometimes been subject to cuts. For example, Toscanini - despite his “do as written“ written reputation - cut 100 bars, about five minutes, out of the finale and made many changes to the orchestration. In USSR times, the work was also sometimes abridged and the hushed and quiet closing pages of the finale, which features the entry of an organ, were replaced by the fortissimo ending of the first movement. In the performance heard here, played in 1992 by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic at the Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall, Yuri Termikanov opts for the “abridged“ finale, complete with the added tam-tam crashes which were among Toscanini’s changes to the scoring. The complete performance can be seen on ’ICA Classics’ DVD ICAD 5065.