Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 1-6 - Mikhail Pletnev

A disaster. These dull, lackluster performances demonstrate conclusively that, however interesting Mikhail Pletnev may be as a pianist, he simply does not yet know how to conduct an orchestra. How can you tell? Because as a pianist he\'s willful, rhapsodic, eccentric, but full of ideas and never boring. As a conductor, he\'s metronomic, reserved, inhibited, and simply unable to impress any interpretive character on the music at all. And despite the fact that these are recent digital recordings, they don\'t even sound that great. Avoid. --David Hurwitz (Amazon)