Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin

“This 1984 recording, previously unreleased outside Russia, shows the Bolshoi at its beefiest” BBC Music Magazine, May 2010 ***

"This is a magnificent achievement on all sides. In a recording that is wider in range, more immediate than almost any I can recall, the work comes to arresting life under Bychkov's vital direction ... Focile and Hvorostovsky prove almost ideal interpreters of the central roles." Gramophone, December 1993

“This is a magnificent achievement on all sides.
In a recording that is wide in range, the work comes to arresting life under Bychkov's vital direction. Too often of late, on disc and in the theatre, the score has been treated self-indulgently and on too large a scale. Bychkov makes neither mistake, emphasizing the unity of its various scenes, never lingering at slower tempos than Tchaikovsky predicates, yet never moving too fast for his singers.
Focile and Hvorostovsky prove almost ideal interpreters of the central roles. Focile offers keen-edged yet warm tone and total immersion in Tatyana's character. Aware throughout of the part's dynamic demands, she phrases with complete confidence, eagerly catching the girl's dreamy vulnerability and heightened imagination in the Letter Scene, which has that sense of awakened love so essential to it. Then she exhibits Tatyana's new-found dignity on Gremin's arm and finally her desperation when Onegin reappears to rekindle her romantic feelings.
Hvorostovsky is here wholly in his element. His singing has at once the warmth, elegance and refinement Tchaikovsky demands from his antihero.
He suggests all Onegin's initial disdain, phrasing his address to the distraught and humiliated Tatyana – Focile so touching here – with distinction, and brings to it just the correct bon ton, a kind of detached humanity. He fires to anger with a touch of the heroic in his tone when challenged by Lensky, becomes transformed and single-minded when he catches sight of the 'new' Tatyana at the St Petersburg Ball. Together he, Focile and Bychkov make the finale the tragic climax it should be: indeed here this passage almost unbearably moving in this reading.
Shicoff has refined and expanded his Lensky since he recorded it for Levine. His somewhat lachrymose delivery suits the character of the lovelorn poet, and he gives his big aria a sensitive, Russian profile, full of much subtlety of accent, the voice sounding in excellent shape, but there is a shade too much self-regard when he opens the ensemble at Larin's party with 'Yes, in your house'. Anisimov is a model Gremin, singing his aria with generous tone and phrasing while not making a meal of it. Olga Borodina is a perfect Olga, spirited, a touch sensual, wholly idiomatic with the text – as, of course, is the revered veteran Russian mezzo Arkhipova as Filipievna, an inspired piece of casting. Sarah Walker, Covent Garden's Filipievna, is here a sympathetic Larina. Also from the Royal Opera comes Egerton's lovable Triquet, but whereas Gergiev, in the theatre, dragged out his couplets inordinately, Bychkov once more strikes precisely the right tempo.
There will also be a very special place in the discography of the opera for the vintage Russian versions, but as a recording they are naturally outclassed by the Philips, which now becomes the outright recommendation.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Solti, characteristically crisp in attack, has plainly warmed to the score of Tchaikovsky's colourful opera...Here, for the first time, the full range of expression in this most atmospheric of operas is superbly caught” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition ****

“Solti puts the Royal Opera House orchestra through its emotional paces, but his cast is curiously detached. Stuart Burrows is an elegant Lensky and Teresa Kubiak is a sweet-toned Tatiana.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2013 ***