***1/2 Michael Tilson Thomas and the Boston Symphony Orchestra

TCHAIKOVSKY: SYMPHONY NO. 1 and DEBUSSY: IMAGES POUR ORCHESTRE

(Deutsche Grammophon)

Hard-pressed to remember what the BSO sounded like BSO (Before Seiji Ozawa)? Return with us to those thrilling days of yesteryear -- actually the year is 1970, when Seiji was just arriving and Michael Tilson Thomas was the orchestra's assistant conductor. This Deutsche Grammophon reissue, which couples Tchaikovsky's "Winter Dreams" Symphony with Debussy's Images pour orchestre, offers a engaging look back at the road not taken by the BSO.

Tchaikovsky completed his First Symphony in 1868 (he later revised it), and if it's not quite the barn burner that Berlioz's symphonic debut (the Symphonie fantastique) was, or Mahler's No. 1, it can still fire up a cold, snowy day. The title (which the composer was responsible for) should actually be "Winter Daydreams." The first movement ("Daydreams on a Wintry Road") contrasts an infectious sleigh-ride rhythm with a brooding second theme; the second ("O Land of Gloom! O Land of Mist") broods in earnest, with a poignant oboe-and-bassoon duet before the French horns take over. The Mendelssohnian Scherzo leads to the first of Tchaikovsky's bittersweet waltzes; the rousing imperial Finale has always made me think of a navy parade in St. Petersburg, perhaps because there's a hint of "Anchors Aweigh" at the peroration. Tilson Thomas keeps a firm hand on the tiller, clarifying the structure with steady tempos and rhythms and vivid detail and maintaining a balance between kinetic and poetic while letting the BSO's succulent winds and brass sizzle; he even manages to disguise the structural weakness of the Finale. Most of the better versions of this symphony -- the very classical Lorin Maazel (Decca), the quirkier, more idiomatic Mstislav Rostropovich (EMI) -- are not available singly, so this reissue, with its gorgeous sound, rules the field, though Igor Markevitch's bargain two-disc set of Tchaikovsky's first three symphonies (Philips) also deserves a place on your shelf.

Debussy's Images pour orchestre seems almost an afterthought, but it makes for a generous CD (81 minutes for about $13), and Tilson Thomas and the BSO deliver an alert, thoughtful, full-blooded reading (from 1971) that might have you wondering whether the orchestra could do as well today.

-- Jeffrey Gantz