{"id":3966,"date":"2026-05-07T23:17:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3966"},"modified":"2026-05-07T23:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:17:13","slug":"the-worlds-greatest-orchestra-its-significance-then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2026\/05\/the-worlds-greatest-orchestra-its-significance-then-and-now.html","title":{"rendered":"The World’s Greatest Orchestra — Its Significance Then and Now"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Yevgeny Mravinsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The decline in orchestral performance continues apace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A specimen: The main theme of the sublime pas de deux from Tchaikovsky\u2019s The Nutcracker<\/em> is  a descending G major scale introduced by the cellos, then repeated in response by the first violins. I recently heard a performance by an American orchestra whose principal cellist is venerable. His section took ownership of Tchaikovsky\u2019s melody. But the violins \u2013 predominantly young — weren\u2019t listening, and played the same scale mechanically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My memory is long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was fourteen years old when I encountered the world\u2019s greatest orchestra. It was the Leningrad Philharmonic, on tour in White Plains, New York, in 1962. As I much later wrote in The Propaganda of Freedom<\/strong><\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I heard a program comprising Mozart\u2019s Violin Concerto No. 5 with [David] Oistrakh, a Myaskovsky symphony, and Tchaikovsky\u2019s Fifth. ‘The Death of Tybalt’ from Prokofiev\u2019s Romeo and Juliet <\/em>was an encore. I listened in a state of shock. The entire ensemble vibrated with color. The horn vibratos and tight, bright trumpet timbres were new to me. The orchestra\u2019s glory was its string choir. The violins played with a wealth of nuance I had not imagined possible. The dynamic range of the whole group, from threaded wisps to sonic avalanches, was unique in my experience. In Prokofiev the palette of the Leningrad Philharmonic, in its myriad dimensions, was more \u201cRomantic,\u201d less \u201cmodern,\u201d than the Western norm. In Mozart its espressivo <\/em>grew exquisitely refined. In Tchaikovsky the Leningrad sound was, as I instantly and unforgettably realized, Tchaikovsky\u2019s sound, revealed to my ears for the first time.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conductor was the young Genadi Rozhdestvensky, but it was Yevgeny Mravinsky\u2019s orchestra. He had led it since 1938.<\/em> He did not conduct elsewhere. He shared the 1962 tour with Rozhdestvensky. He had never before appeared in the United States and was little known here. With few exceptions, his recordings were not readily available. His name did not come up in High Fidelity<\/em> Magazine, which I read religiously. Conventional New World wisdom held that the greatest orchestras were American \u2013 George Szell\u2019s in Cleveland, Fritz Reiner\u2019s in Chicago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such opinions mattered because this was the era of the cultural Cold War, in which the Soviets gained a head start by flooding American concert halls with musicians of genius. It\u2019s a story, drenched in ironies, that I tell in The Propaganda of Freedom, <\/em>the propaganda in question being a risible American assertion that only \u201cfree artists\u201d in \u201cfree societies\u201d produced great art. Symptomatic of the rivalries in play were the reviews posted in the New York Times<\/em> by Harold Schonberg. Schonberg patronized Mravinsky, lecturing him on up-to-date Mozart interpretation. (Schonberg\u2019s response to the \u201cold-fashioned\u201d Bolshoi Opera, thirteen years later, was the same. It would be a mistake to imagine that American critics of Soviet artists were more generous or less threatened than Soviet critics in their assessment of visiting Americans.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the seventies, the Leningrad Philharmonic lost key members to defection, including any number of Jewish string players. I got to know Lazar Gosman, who wound up in the St. Louis Symphony. He told me that when Mravinsky read Schonberg\u2019s reviews, he announced he would never return to the United States\u2014and he never did. Gosman also told me that in St. Louis he was amazed to discover the musicians heading for their cars after concerts. In Leningrad the orchestra members would congregate post-concert to drink and decompress. The Leningrad concertmaster, Viktor Liberman, in 1979 became concertmaster of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, then of Amsterdam\u2019s Concertgebouw Orchestra six years later. He told Russian acquaintances that he did not fully appreciate the quasi-religious solemnity of Mravinsky\u2019s rehearsals and concerts until he left. In Leningrad, rehearsals and concerts were never casual occasions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liberman\u2019s first violins were the orchestra\u2019s pride and glory. The young fiddlers I encounter in our top American orchestras are a different species. So far as I am aware, comparably robust string sonorities can nowadays only be found abroad, in the ranks of the Berlin Philharmonic. (One could also here cite Serge Koussevitzky\u2019s Boston Symphony violins, also Russian \u2013 e.g, in their scorching 1943 live broadcas<\/a>t<\/strong> of Tchaikovsky\u2019s Francesca da Rimini<\/em>.) Mravinsky\u2019s violins were more sensuous, more aromatic, more Romantically \u201cRussian\u201d in phrasing and nuance than Berlin\u2019s, then or now. Thanks to the internet, you can see him drill his string choir<\/a> <\/strong>in Brahms\u2019 Fourth Symphony, asking for even more sustained weight and rhythmic precision \u2013 and getting it (go to 39:38). You can also access a live performance evoking what I heard 64 years ago in White Plains: a 1960 recording (from the Edinburgh Festival) of Rozhdestvensky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky. The music (again) is Francesca da Rimini<\/em> and it\u2019s the most titanic Tchaikovsky performance I know. You can hear it for yourself right here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mravinsky will always be mainly associated with the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich. He premiered six of them. Before his recordings began circulating in the US, the ending of Shostakovich\u2019s Fifth was ecstatically swift, infectiously purveyed by Leonard Bernstein. Mravinsky was oppressively slow: a revelation<\/a><\/strong> supported by Shostakovich\u2019s eventual testimony that he had here subversively depicted \u201cforced rejoicing.\u201d According to Dave Hurwitz of Classics Today<\/em><\/a><\/strong>, who knows such things, the supreme Mravinsky Shostakovich recording is a 1982 version of the Eighth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever since that 1962 epiphany, Mravinsky will for me always signify Tchaikovsky. In a gripping\u00a0video<\/strong><\/a> of a 1982 Leningrad Philharmonic version of the Fifth Symphony \u2013 regarded by Mravinsky as Tchaikovsky\u2019s peak achievement. The cameras remain transfixed by the conductor\u2019s severe countenance. But listen to the violins gradually lean into the first movement\u2019s rhapsodic second subject at 5:13.<\/strong> To hear the orchestra in peak form, beautifully recorded, there\u2019s a famous 1960 Deutsche<\/strong> Gramophone<\/strong><\/a> LP<\/strong> of Tchaikovsky\u2019s Fifth recorded on tour (but not in live performance) in Vienna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It goes without saying that any orchestra and any conductor with so pronounced an identity will not serve all seasons. And yet I find the breadth of affinity surprising. Of the supreme Bruckner conductors of the twentieth century, Mravinsky is surely the least acknowledged. The sheer weight of utterance, anchored by guttural double basses, is overwhelming. Here<\/strong><\/a>, <\/strong>for instance, is a revelatory Bruckner Seventh, from 1967. In the first two movements, the string choir is gesangvoll<\/em> to a degree new to me. Every line is shaped. The pacing is surprisingly plastic. At the tidal climax of the Adagio, in place of the usual rallentando, Mravinsky just piles it on. The coda in the brass \u2013 the music memorializing Wagner \u2013 surges to a searing triple-forte climax. Just when you think this live performance can only begin to tire, the players deliver a scherzo of incredible swagger and panache in which the recapitulation actually gathers strength, striking an even deeper groove. But the biggest surprise is the finale, which had always seemed to me an inadequate capstone. It is torrid. There is a famous story about Mravinsky rehearsing Bruckner 7 for weeks or maybe it was months, then cancelling the public performance. In some versions, Mravinsky felt he never got it right. But in the British documentary I reference below, the story ends differently \u2013 that Mravinsky\u2019s final dress rehearsal was a performance he felt he could never equal, so he eschewed a public concert. I believe that version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Beethoven, Mravinsky\u2019s austerities are humbling \u2013 as in a 1964 version of the Seventh Symphony<\/a>, <\/strong>massive yet quick. His Stravinsky repertoire included the later Stravinsky \u2013 Apollo, The Fairy\u2019s Kiss<\/em>, and \u2013 amazingly \u2013 Agon<\/em>, a non-tonal score only played in the US in the pit of the New York City Ballet. Another surprise is Mravinsky\u2019s Debussy: a vivid La Mer<\/em> from 1962<\/a><\/strong> in which the orchestra\u2019s lyric brass vibratos and penetrating winds \u2013 resistant to homogenizing blends — sound serendipitously \u201cFrench\u201d (that is: they recall what French orchestras used to sound like).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What to make of it today? The Iron Curtain was an evil imprisonment \u2013 yet paradoxically preserved certain artistic traditions rapidly fading in the West. However throttled by the state bureaucracy, Soviet classical music retained an integrated community of performers, pedagogues, and \u2013 most remarkably \u2013 contemporary composers, including a pair of popular geniuses: Shostakovich and Serge Prokofiev. In this context, Mravinsky was an inspired throwback to a lineage of podium tyrants, a towering martinet who in bearing and gesture evoked the impersonal severity of a Byzantine gargoyle. He drilled the players unstintingly. His authority and rehearsal prerogatives were absolute. The late Byron Janis \u2013 the American pianist who triumphed in the Soviet Union two years after Van Cliburn won the1958 Tchaikovsky Competition \u2013 once told me that in Russia he made one musical request: could he possibly perform with Yevgeny Mravinsky and the Leningrad Philharmonic? We\u2019re very sorry, he was informed, but no one tells Mravinsky what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A British documentary film, \u201cYevgeny Mravinsky: Soviet Conductor, Russian Aristocrat,\u201d discloses the man. Privately, he loathed the Soviet regime. He was also privately religious. His apartment displayed many Christian icons. He was ruthlessly self-critical. Born to an aristocratic family, he profoundly identified with what Russia was before Lenin and Stalin. He mourned the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A second documentary film<\/a> incorporates long stretches of Mravinsky speaking. It\u2019s in Russian \u2013 which my wife translated for me. Here are some of the things Mravinsky says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On interpretation: \u201cYou have to feel it\u2019s the only way even though you can\u2019t prove it.\u201d (Claudio Arrau, in my Conversations with Arrau<\/a><\/em>, says the same thing and adds: \u201cThinking about the audience, that\u2019s one thing that can kill an interpretation.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On preparing a score at home: \u201cA torture. Terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Shostakovich: \u201cHe was the greatest composer of our time. . . . I lived in the same reality that he did.\u201d Subsequent to the Fifth Symphony, they never discussed the interpretation of his music. \u201cI could read it in his face.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Shostakovich\u2019s impulsive decision, in rehearsal, to dedicate his Eighth Symphony to Mravinsky: \u201cThe greatest happiness of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commanding austerity of Mravinsky\u2019s presence is occasionally relieved by an ironic smile or a softening of his gaunt features. Agnes told me that the self-evident integrity of his severe discourse made \u201ca beautiful impression: generous, kind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                                                            ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s another extract from The<\/em> Propaganda of Freedom, <\/em>recalling my discovery of Cold War musical visitors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Mainly, . . . my experience of Soviet classical music was an experience of pianists, arriving in droves. [Emil] Gilels, more than [Sviatoslav] Richter, was for me. He commanded the biggest, most colorful of all keyboard signatures. He was at all times larger than life, heedlessly expressive. But he suffered greatly as a Soviet artist. Other pianists, fed up with being told what, when, and where they could perform, fled to the West with stories of unimaginable indignities and insanities. Two whom I came to know were Vladimir Feltsman and the late Alexander Toradze. They resented being trained as Soviet musical athletes, groomed to win the international piano competitions in which the Russian excelled. But their musical preparation, at the Moscow Conservatory, was more personal and comprehensive than in any Western music school; from an early age they were accepted into a ripe community of musicians. They also attained a higher level of cultural and intellectual awareness than was (or is) the Western norm. And they benefited from a native repertoire including important twentieth-century and contemporary composers. Toradze specialized in Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky; he was also closely associated with the late Georgian composer Giya Kancheli. Feltsman, whose affinities are Germanic, forged a close personal and professional relationship with Alfred Schnittke, for many the leading Soviet composer of the post-Shostakovich generation. The late American pianist John Browning, who well knew the competition circuit, once summarized: ‘If the Russians don\u2019t come, the general standards are not nearly as good. . . . You know, they\u2019re ready to give concerts at the age of fifteen\u2014they\u2019re truly ready.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In one obvious respect, cultural exchange was a Russian failure: the departures of Toradze (1983) and Feltsman (1987); of Rudolf Nureyev (1961); of Vladimir Ashkenazy (1963); of Rostropovich and his wife, the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya (1974); and of Mikhail Baryshnikov (1974) were world news. But these artists, and others who remained Soviet, conveyed a caliber of cultural life surpassing in many respects an American classical music culture that had (and has) never outgrown a Eurocentric bias. . . . “<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mravinsky\u2019s Leningrad Philharmonic, the crown jewel of Soviet classical music, was already a time capsule. With colonnades, hanging chandeliers, and temporary chairs, its Philharmonic Hall, built in 1839, more resembled a palatial ballroom than a concert auditorium. The current occupant, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, is a world-class ensemble without a striking sonic signature. No less than today\u2019s Boston Symphony or Philadelphia Orchestra, it more partakes of generic contemporary norms than of specific musical identities once enforced by a Koussevitzky or Leopold Stokowski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will be no rebirth of the Leningrad Philharmonic or of other singular ensembles from another era. But orchestras can at least aspire to attain a singular sense of purpose \u2013 something I sense in Delta David Gier\u2019s mission-driven South Dakota Symphony, and in Ivan Fischer\u2019s Budapest Festival Orchestra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for Viktor Liberman\u2019s Leningrad violins \u2013 they weren\u2019t just a product of Mravinsky\u2019s tyranny. The music was in their blood, in centuries of culture building upon itself. Today we have social media and artificial intelligence. It is a challenge we are summoned to ponder and confront.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To read a pertinent blog on the decline of orchestral performance (“Why Riccardo Muti is Wrong”), click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The decline in orchestral performance continues apace. A specimen: The main theme of the sublime pas de deux from Tchaikovsky\u2019s The Nutcracker is  a descending G major scale introduced by the cellos, then repeated in response by the first violins. I recently heard a performance by an American orchestra whose principal cellist is venerable. His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-11Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3966"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3975,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3966\/revisions\/3975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}