Utopia Orchestra / Teodor Currentzis

Tchaikovsky is passion at the extremes: jubilantly euphoric or furiously clashing, but above all highly personal. Is there a better conductor to translate his music today than Teodor Currentzis? The idiosyncratic chief has intoxicated the biggest stages with his supreme expressiveness and eccentric approach. His last encounter with Tchaikovsky in 2017 was engulfed in superlatives. Reviews of Currentzis’ recording of the Pathétique described it as ‘utterly dazzling’ and as delivering ‘an exhilaration that we have never heard before in this symphony.’ This time, moreover, Currentzis collected for his recently formed Utopia Orchestra a group of like-minded, iconoclastic musicians from the best orchestras in the world. There’s no doubt about it: the dramatic, fateful Symphony No. 5 is a perfect fit for them.