Yet another Mahler 7? No way. Tchaikovsky rules!

After listening to Chailly's excellent Mahler 7, I discovered yesterday that his recording (*) of Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony, also with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, is outstanding, too.
A fine interpration by the conductor, superb playing by the orchestra, excellent sound. Refined, but also exciting; definitely not boring.
I'm glad I didn't cull this CD from my collection, when I was in an anti-Chailly mood, along with his Bruckner 4, Mahler 1 and Mahler 5.
I bought it in San Francisco around 1990 and only sort of liked it.
Three and a half decades later I think it's great!
(I now prefer Chaiily's recording to the one by Toscanini's made in 1953, which I'm downgrading from AAA to B-. Chailly gets the AAA, up from A- or so. I also have recordings by Jansons, Haitink and Silvestri and may report on those later.)
It occurred to me that Tchaikovsky's melodies, not only in this piece, are on the whole more beautiful than Mahler's.
And the touching, solemn ending of the Manfred Symphony (with the organ) is in my opinion clearly superior to Mahler's loud, pompous, quasi-impressive finales, which in some cases border on the distasteful.
Tchaikovsky often seems brilliant, even inspired.
If Mahler sometimes dressed to impress (and perhaps often tried too hard, as Paul Simon did, according to an article in the New Yorker), Tchaikovsky was often effortlessly stylish (and perhaps more often effortlessly unstylish in his most cacophonic passages).
Or something.
Disclaimer: my humble opinions are not carved in stone but evolving.
(*) Tchaikovsky: Manfred Symphony
Concertgebouw Orchestra
conductor: Riccardo Chailly
Decca 421 441-2
Recorded 1987, released 1988
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Roland van Gaalen
The Netherlands