Tchaikovsky: Souvenir de Florence, Op. 70, TH 118 (Live from Verbier Festival / 2013)

Switzerland’s Verbier Festival is an Alpine idyll hosting the world’s most celebrated and starry musicians, and this album offers the chance to relive a terrific performance from 2013. Tchaikovsky’s four-movement Souvenir de Florence, a love letter to the Italian city from 1890, may be best-known in its string orchestra arrangement, but the original sextet version is a more fiery, passionate experience. The six A-listers here elicit every ounce of the score’s emotion, from the agitated opening waltz to the heartfelt, aria-like adagio and the final two movements, brimming with irrepressible Russian spirit.