One more Honeck. A number of people on here have seen or heard Honeck's Dvorak 8 and commented on how they hate it like anything - the same happened with the late Mark Beaulieu, briefly my closest musical friend.
I LOVE that performance. Along with Kubelik and Bruno Walter, it's my favorite Dvorak 8, and may edge them out.
So listen to this Tchaikovsky 5... a work that is the sight of world champion maestro parasiting. Compare Honeck in it to the grubby claws of everyone from Mengelberg to Bernstein to Furtwangler to Stokowski to Celibidache to recent Gergiev; Honeck's are downright mild.
It's still, without a doubt, a capital-I Interpretation, but unlike, say... all of those others, Honeck is not interjecting in any manner that grinds momentum to a halt mid-phrase. His one truly annoying habit is the subito-piano crescendo thing that virtually everybody else does (that habit needs to die a girsly death), but otherwise, who cares? Listen to the infinite and volcanic dynamic range from five pianos to five fortes. Listen to the infinite variety of string color and the way the orchestra blends with each other in lyric passages like a single instrument. Listen to the unbelievable presence of bass line. There has not been romantic musicmaking of this heart since Klaus Tennstedt.
Tchaikovsky 5 is not subtle music. In my opinion, it's easily the weakest of the 'big three' (Tchaikovsky agreed). Unlike the bold originality of 4 and 6, it's kind of a 'symphony by check box' that duly goes through all the motions of Beethovenian form. A lot of performances go in the other direction, follow the formal outline, make it subtler than the score calls for, and are just dull and/or cold. So if Honeck slows up more than usual on second subjects, why would it matter? If he exaggerates already specified retardandi, well... it's in keeping with the music's blatant spirit. If he speeds up for that weird Russian folk song quote in the finale, well... that's exactly what Tchaikovsky marks, and hardly anyone honors it.
Honeck/Pittsburgh is one of the work's great recordings. This Frankfurt performance is entirely in keeping with their spirit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_B02BZp-5Y
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