About the Album:
In 1890, Tchaikovsky wrote to Nadezhda von Meck, his patroness of thirteen years, about a possible “program symphony.” AM Three years later, he composed this, his sixth symphony, between February and August. He dedicated the work to Vladimir Davidov, his nephew, who was prominent in many of Tchaikovsky’s letters and diary entries in the 1880s. AM
The work’s subtitle, “Pathétique,” translates not to “pathetic” as one might assume, but “deeply affecting the emotions.” TM It’s “an excellent description,” TM considering how Tchaikovsky “gets tangled up in tones of overwhelming sorrow, and then leaps into the swollen, outsized drama that was a trademark of his ballets. Where Beethoven’s dark moments hold an undercurrent of hope and faith in humanity, Tchaikovsky lets the despair just be despair.” TM
“During the work’s incubation Tchaikovsky was in rare good spirits, pleased with his boldness and fluency, especially in the trailblazing finale, a drawn-out Adagio of funereal character. Where others still wrote conventional slow movements, he hit on the idea of ‘a limping waltz’ in 5/4 time. And he made the scherzo a march that builds to such a pitch of excitement that audiences ever since, everywhere, applaud at the end.” AM
“A lugubrious Adagio prologue begins with a bassoon solo in E minor that makes its way upward through the murk of divisi string basses, followed by a nervous little motif that blossoms into the main theme of an Allegro ma non troppo sonata-structure in B minor. The memorably sighing, mauve-hued melody that dominates this movement is actually its secondary subject. A crashing orchestral tutti sets up the passionately agitated development section, followed by a condensed reprise and a brief, calmed coda.” AM
“Tchaikovsky’s marking for this D major ‘waltz’ movement is Allegro con grazia – a song and trio with extended coda whose mood may be wistful, even melancholic midway, but whose spirit is balletic, to the extent of echoing Nutcracker’s ‘Waltz of the Flowers,’ composed a year earlier.” AM
“The March-Scherzo, Allegro molto vivace in common time, has an elfin character at the start. It is a sonatina (exposition and reprise without development) that quick-steps to an explosive climax but always returns to tonic G major.” AM
“Another sonatina (symphonic developments were Tchaikovsky's bête noire) is anchored in B minor, although the tragic second theme enters in D major. The overall mood is inconsolably grieving, but not ‘pathetic.’ Ultimately, the music returns to those murky depths in which the symphony was born some 40 minutes earlier — without, however, benediction or hope.” AM
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