Judge Dennis Davis
Tchaikovsky’s 4th and 6th Symphonies

Judge Dennis Davis | Tchaikovsky’s 4th and 6th Symphonies | 06.08.22

Visuals displayed and music played throughout the presentation.

- Good evening, well, afternoon or whatever it is to everybody here. It’s evening. Tonight I wanted to talk to you about the Tchaikovsky’s fourth and fifth symphonies. Let me back up for a moment. I was doing a reprise of a talk that I actually started on lockdown some while back on Leonard Bernstein. And one of the clips I showed on Sunday night when I was doing this talk was Leonard Bernstein talking about Beethoven. And it was really interesting because he made a number of remarks, which I found particularly pertinent to tonight’s talk. He spoke about the fact that Beethoven spoke to the universal. That, and if you listen to Beethoven, it made a claim to all the best of universal values in the world. And that, when you listen to his music, it was an uplifting call to something which placed humanity in the best possible light. And he then went on to say that there are some things you can’t say with words, but you can express with music. And that, when we walk out of the concert hall having listened to a Beethoven symphony, of course, he emphasised the ninth, we are uplifted. We feel spiritually refreshed. We feel cleansed, if you wish, in relation to the experience we’ve had. And what Beethoven spoke to in the world was ultimately this yearning for something better and for basically sharing with us his own existential angst. His own philosophy of the world. And speaking to us even from the grave of more than 200 years.

Why do I mention this to you? ‘Cause it seems to me the Tchaikovsky, albeit not as distinguished a composer as Beethoven, but then, in parenthesis, who is? Nonetheless, speaks to so much of our feelings, our insecurities, the difficulties we engage with in life. And, in many ways, he’s a very underrated composer. And I thought that, although Patrick has given a splendid series of lectures, which includes the Tchaikovsky operas, I thought that it would be wrong not to share with you at least some insights into two of these symphonies. Of course, I could have chosen the Manfred symphony. I could have chosen the fifth symphony, as well, but I’ve only got a short period with you. And I thought, and even then I’ve had to be very selective in the clips that I show to share the music. So I decided to deal with the fourth and the sixth. Both of which, I think, reflect exactly the philosophy that Beethoven, sorry, that Bernstein had in mind. Now, much of the biography of Tchaikovsky has been shared with you and I don’t necessarily need to traverse it yet again. But let me start then with the fourth symphony composed in 1877. It has no question about it. A whole range of layers of extra musical associations and connotations. Just let me indicate why.

At the end of 1876, Tchaikovsky was introduced to… I’m going to pronounce this wrongly, so please. I apologise. Nadezhda von Meck, who was a wife of a magnate in Russia at the time, and who, who was a wealthy widow, and who had employed a former student, and possibly a lover of Tchaikovsky, the violinist Joseph Kotek. And for years she had provided Tchaikovsky with financial, intellectual, and moral support for his work. In the literature of Tchaikovsky, she’s often portrayed as a positive female counterpart from the composer’s perspective compared to the ill fated young woman who’d also been a student whom he married in a disastrous marriage in 1877. Important in the very year in which the fourth symphony was composed. And, of course, it was an unhappy attempt to satisfy social appearances and to deflect tension from the fact that he was a gay man. And the fourth symphony was easy. First large work having been take, basically flowing from the patronage of von Meck. And he said, in exchange with her, he, there was an exchange of letters about it. She, in a letter, she asked Tchaikovsky whether the fourth symphony had some hidden story attached to that. And he responded in a letter saying, “Unusually…” Sorry, “Usually when this question is put to me about a symphonic work, my answer is none. But then, in our symphony, that’s the fourth, it’s possible to express in words what he’s trying to say and to you and only to you.”

And the letter then effectively says quite a lot about this particular symphony. He said a number of things about it. He said, for example, that it really was a development of the role of fate in one’s life. The way in which fate shapes one’s life. And think about it. For all of us, the question of some form of destiny, which lurks in a dark, ominous way above one’s life. And he also then, and what was particularly interesting about this was that, of course, Tchaikovsky’s music, both the fourth and the fifth symphony. I’ll mention that briefly in a moment. They all have some representation of fate in a particular significant part of the symphony. And then he also wrote to the, his fellow composer, Sergey Taneyev, as follows. “The programme, this is of the fourth symphony, is such that it cannot be formulated in words. Should not as symphony express everything for which there are no words.”

Again, replicating Bernstein’s point by which the soul wishes to express and which requires it to be expressed. Tchaikovsky went on to say there was a parallel musical programme, which is at the fourth rest of the foundation that, in his view, was almost similar to that of the Beethoven fifth symphony. A wide work, which of course is widely regarded expression of the struggle with fate. Now, we’ve discussed the Beethoven five, you and I, in a previous session. I won’t say more about it, but it does seem to me that what he talks about in this particular symphony, and the way in which Tchaikovsky was obsessed with, that he felt almost a fatalistic view of the world, which crowded in on him and which, notwithstanding, transient periods of joy would always revert back to the mean, as it were, the existential mean. For him, that was absolutely crucial. And, certainly, the fourth symphony, and to an extent the fifth symphony, both reflect this particular position.

And so the, I can’t possibly go through the whole of the fourth symphony. It’s quite a monumental work. And the first movement of it is very long. It’s almost as long as the rest of the symphony. But let’s just listen to the first minute and a half of the fourth symphony. It has the fate, the fate theme comes out. There’s a blast from the horns and the trumpets. And this is the motto coming over and over again in the symphony. It comes back all the time. And so, from the very opening bars, you know where this is going. What the battle of the symphony is. One does not need Tchaikovsky’s programmatic to make this understood to us, but the fact that he had exchanged these various letters, to which I’ve made reference, clearly is indicative thereof. So, Lauren, can we get the first clip please?

♪ Music Plays ♪

So that’s the opening bars. It’s almost, it’s the Tchaikovsky equivalent, if you wish, of the Beethoven five. And over and over and over again in the symphony, you will hear those bars coming back. They can’t be suppressed until towards the end of the symphony. They come back, but the triumph of the symphony quietens them down. By the way, the conductor whose name I can’t entirely pronounce, the wonderful conductor, she’s just resigned from the Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra. One of the best young conductor. And some of her recordings I would highly recommend. So we then turn the first movement, essentially, after the fate theme grapples with a whole range of almost dreamlike sequences as Tchaikovsky tries to contemplate a way out of this fate theme, which is, for him, is almost the predestination for his life.

And bearing in mind, of course, that he’s writing this symphony at a time of great excruciating existential crisis with a marriage that has gone completely wrong and, with himself, a sense facing a whole range of identity issues given the fact that being gay in the 19th century in Russia wasn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world. But then we get to the second movement. And Tchaikovsky, I think, gives us one of the most gloriously beautiful movements in the symphonic oeuvre. It’s a magnificent movement. I’m going to only play for you the first four or five minutes of it. It starts with an oboe solo. It evokes the most melancholy series of feelings. Perhaps feelings which one has at night when one reflects on, not just the day, but on one’s life as whole. Alone sitting, trying to understand what is going on.

But it’s quite interesting that at some point, as you’ll see, he introduces a bassoon. And whilst, I suppose, it’s fair to say that the oboe reflects almost a kind of mezzo soprano, possibly looking towards the future, the bassoon, sort of, more melancholy approach to the whole business. Ultimately comes, as well, to provide an even more haunting approach to the music. And so, I wanted to play for you 'cause it’s just absolutely glorious. Can’t get the theme out of one’s head when one’s heard it. The first three or four, they’re really one of the great oboe soloists, again in the symphonic canon. But here we are with Daniel Barenboim conducting. And let us just listen to the first of five minutes. It’s just glorious. And you’ll hear why. Lauren, the second one.

♪ Music Plays ♪

Right, Lauren, if we can, we can stop it. Thank you, we could carry on with this, but I’ve got quite a bit to do. I hope you follow what I was trying to suggest. How it starts with the oboe. There is a bassoon and it’s just beautifully melancholic. I mean, you want to cry for that first or second, even then- The orchestration varies so much. The melody is then… No, no, no, wait. Melody is passed to the cellos and then it moves from the cellos to a whole range of orchestration. And you could see as it grows a more confident melody that comes back, although as I just stopped it, course returned to that melancholic issue, melancholic theme. And somebody once suggested, one of Tchaikovsky’s students said there was almost a balletic nature to the section. You could almost see a pair of dancers culminating with a climatic lift. There’s no question.

It grows more frenzy. It starts at the melancholy and it moves into more confident kind of mode. But it is really a glorious, glorious movement. And that first part of the oboe for me is really Tchaikovsky at his very, very best. And, interesting, it ends with the bassoon, which gives a final reprise of that initial that we heard from the oboe. And it really then, almost if you wish, kind of, a sense, almost, of hope and then a retreat back into a melancholic past. It really is a remarkable piece of work. The third movement, which I’m not going to discuss with you because I just don’t have time, is very much a series of, kind of, as it were, a score so, of great enthusiasm, is worthy of various scenes, which of course, there were also a picture of drunken peasants. And there’s a street song with the woodwinds and the brass and a military procession. And we start to get a lift out of that theme of fate to which I’ve been referring in the first movement, even though it comes back in the third movement and certainly in the fourth. But by the time that it comes to the fourth, what is happening is, which begins, as we’re going to hear in a moment, with our Fortissimo rush of notes.

But the point is that it’s now showing he’s able to actually conquer that sense of fate just for the time being that, for him, perhaps he’s been able to transcend the destiny that he feels, ultimately, is pushing down on him. And there are periods where that fate theme, which introduces the whole symphony, comes back again and again. But it can’t quell the final triumph that Tchaikovsky reaches for in the symphony. But you can get a feeling of this in just the opening three minutes of the symphony, of the fourth movement, I’m sorry. And here they are from the Berlin Philharmonic.

♪ Music Plays ♪

You can get a sense, from that just opening of this, that he uses Russian folk music. And, in a sense, what he’s doing here, it seems to me, is to say, “Yes, it’s true that the world is sad. Yes, it’s true that I have these melancholy moments such as reflective in the second movement. Yes, it’s true that fate seems to, it’s so many cares intrude into any joy that I may have. But at the end of the day, joy too is a powerful force. It’s one that we should utilise for our own.” And the symphony, therefore, even though if we played the whole movement, the irrepressible fate theme comes back and reminds us that it’s not gone away. Even then, that third of Fortissimo notes, in the first three minutes that I’ve played for you, that wins the day. And yet, consider this. In a postscript, Tchaikovsky wrote to von Meck as follows, “Just as I was about to put the letter to you in an envelope, I reread it. That was the letter I read to you earlier and was horrified. I was severely depressed last winter when writing this symphony. And it serves as a faithful echo of what I was experiencing. But it was only as an echo. How can it be translated into a clear and coherent succession of words. I do not have know how to do that. I’ve already forgotten so much.”

And, of course, if you read biographies of Tchaikovsky, there’s an endless debate about the relationship between the fate theme that I’ve emphasised so often and the composer’s own homosexuality. Some believe that the symphony expresses his guilt and shame over taboo desires he could not suppress while others argue that he fully accepted his sexual orientation. The fact of the matter is that, in this particular symphony, he comes out of it believing that there still is joy in the world and it’s joy that is important. That he’s been able, as it were, at least now, to put the melancholy behind and to end in triumph. Not, however, true when it comes to the sixth symphony, which is what we’re about to listen to. Before I do that, let me also indicate to you that in the fifth symphony, right, there’s again the fate theme. And, again, ultimately there’s a triumph. By the way, for those of interested and live in Cape Town, tomorrow night, the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra will be playing a rendition of the fifth symphony by Tchaikovsky conducted by Bernhard Gueller. Is a very fine conductor.

So if you’re in Cape Town and you want to listen to the fifth, which the theme goes. The fate theme is there all the time. And you’ll see how he orchestrates it. You can go and listen. But we are now onto the sixth. Now, the sixth is called the Pathétique Symphony. And, of course, it’s been so badly interpreted for so long it’s hard to kind of know where to start. But let me start with the name given to it. The Pathétique Symphony. It really shouldn’t have been called the Pathétique strictly speaking because Tchaikovsky, apparently, according to his brother Modest Tchaikovsky, really used the word Pateticheskaya. I’m not good at pronouncing it, which is translated as passionately. He thought of it as a passionate symphony and not necessarily as the Pathétique. And, in many… And, by the way, when he wrote the symphony, Tchaikovsky actually suggested that, without exaggeration, he said, “I have put my whole soul into this symphony and I hope that your highness…” He was writing to Konstantin Romanov, who was a friend of his. “Will approve of it.” I don’t know whether the Symphony’s original in terms of its musical material, but as far as its form is concerned, it does display an original feature in that its finale is written in adagio tempo non allegro as is normally the case. We’ll get back to that.

But he regarded the symphony. He said over and over again that, “This was the best thing I’ve ever composed or shall compose.” A worker’s existence proved to him that he’d found a way out of the sympathic impasse, which represented return to the heights of his achievement as a composer. And we will see, that in this particular symphony, he had rejected what he regarded as the trivialities of the nutcracker. Certain of the other trivial pieces he’d written for piano. Here was a deeply felt symphony. The best thing he ever wrote. And he said of it, again, he said, “It’s a mystery what the programme is.” I don’t want to tell you what the programme is. But he then did say this. He said, “The ultimate essence of the symphony is life. First part, all impulse, passion, confidence, thirst for activity must be short. The final death result of collapse. Second part, love. Third, disappointments. Fourth, ends dying away.”

Now, that might not be a precise description of the symphony, but it gives you as a pretty reasonable clue as to what, in fact, the symphony was about. And I’m going to say a little bit more about it when we get into the symphony, but it certainly regarded it as the finest work he’d ever written. And I want to suggest to you that it’s a work that influenced composers thereafter, including some of the most important compositions ever written in the symphonic mode. And we’ll get there, but I’m going to start with the first movement. You will notice it’s a slow introduction. A bassoon solo emerges. You’ll hear that above a descending chromatic baseline. It’s a musical pattern, by the way, that served as a traditional symbol of mourning since the Baroque period. And you can feel that.

But then, that gives way to faster music as Tchaikovsky transforms the bassoon solo into what is a very, kind of, almost nervousness articulated by the violins. And then, you’ll hear that theme developed. Punctuated by a series of violent, violent fanfares on the trumpet. It’s an extraordinary beginning to a symphony. It’s not just one and a half minutes of fate. There’s something really ominous and it sets the scene for the whole symphony. So let’s just hear Leonard Bernstein beginning the sixth symphony, the Pathétique, as that were, in reality, called the Passionate Symphony by Tchaikovsky. And observe the opening.

♪ Music Plays ♪

Observe the bassoon solo.

♪ Music Plays ♪

Thanks to Lauren. So you can hear that’s the first movement. It starts to move out of that kind of mournful approach. But we know, really from the beginning, that here is Tchaikovsky reverting to his age old theme of the fourth symphony and the fourth, that theme of fate. The fourth, which we heard. The fifth, if you’ve listened to it. Bam, ba-ba-bam, ba-ba-bam, bam. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Bam, ba-bam, excuse me. But that’s, basically, come through over and over again. The fifth. And here in the sixth. He’s confronted with the same fate issue that has basically been central to both these fourth and sixth symphonies. But, here, given even this beginning, you have a feeling, you have a feeling that something’s going to be different here. That it’s not going to be the resolution of joy that it articulated in both fourth and fifth. But you don’t know that for certain because, although I’m going to skip over to glorious movements, the second, one of the great movements that Tchaikovsky composed again to send me through the cellos, which is really wonderful.

But when you get to the third movement, you actually start to think that, to a large degree, Tchaikovsky resolved all of these crises, which is articulated in the first movement. We are going to gain, even though we are going to examine the role of fate, the role of melancholia within our lives, we will get beyond it. And the third movement, to some extent, seeks to do that. But what is interesting about the third movement, and I’d like, I’m only going to play the last five minutes for you. Is something quite extraordinary. Number one, it’s a very powerful march like theme which comes through, but it’s superficial. It’s very superficial. And, even though, it gets a thrilling climax at the end. And you’ll see that, even though it’s not the end of the symphony, the audience applauds. Wherever you go, I guarantee you, at the end of the third movement of the Tchaikovsky sixth, people applaud. And they think, “Aha, he’s done it again.”

Before we get to that final adagio of the last movement, but what I’d like to play for you just how frenetic. It’s almost a parody of Tchaikovsky’s own music. There’s no real substantive joy here. This is Tchaikovsky reflecting back on how, in a way, he had not really resolved the crisis which is formed central to all of this music. And I want to play you, if I may, just the last four minutes. Frenetically, frenetically conducted in typical style for about four and a half minutes by Bernstein. And don’t tell me at the end of it, you don’t want to clap. If we can get to the halfway through, Lauren. Great.

♪ Music Plays ♪

But that’s not the end of the symphony. That’s an extraordinary thing. And the the point about it, if you listen to… No, no, no, wait, wait, Lauren. Musically, it really is the most superficial ending to the symphony. Could not possibly have been taken seriously by Tchaikovsky. He was actually parroting, it seems to me, that which, perhaps, it’d been written earlier by him. Because you get this thunderous, almost superficial, climax and then observe what happens. He then writes a remarkable movement, the fourth movement, which is a slow adagio. He marks it lamentoso. Lamented. It’s in B minor. It’s an extraordinary encapsulation of pathos. And if you listen to it, it’s in descending scales, which just adds to it. Conveys right through. And what he does, which is quite remarkable, he divides the things of a melody within the first and the second violin.

So each play, they play each note to a descending scale alternatively. It is, and then it die, then there’s a bassoon solo, which then, all of a sudden, there is some form of crescendo, but it dies away. There can be no resolution. Finally, finally, Tchaikovsky has given way to the fact that, to a very large extent, fate has overwhelmed him. And what he had battled for in the fourth and the fifth symphonies, his own existential crises, his own sadnesses, his own grappling with the world, really just gives way. Now there’s one, there, two other aspects I should say about this before we listen. Well let me play you the first. Now, I’ve chosen the Mengelberg version and I’ve chosen that deliberately 'cause Patrick, probably correctly, even though I’m not necessarily an adherent to all the old stuff, although some of it is magnificent, but the Mengelberg version, it’s not, it’s a bit crackly, but it is a remarkable version of the sixth. And I’m just going to play you the last, sorry, the first three minutes. Make some final remarks before we end. Just let’s listen to the first two or three minutes of the Mengelberg version of the sixth.

♪ Music Plays ♪

Okay, Lauren. Lauren. I could, the Mengelberg version, I think, is marvellous because, and I agree with Patrick, it just captures that private, intimate, personal pain, which is basically being articulated through music. Maybe in words you can’t do it, but in music you can. And that’s why the symphony is so unique. It does seem to me, that when you think about it, and I think I’ve discussed with you, certainly some of you, the Mahler Nine at some point in these lectures in which Mahler explores the question of death. And the symphony fades away. And the aspects of Shostakovich and Sibelius of a similar kind. And you kind of wonder whether they would’ve written that had it not been for the example of this Tchaikovsky sixth. Tchaikovsky was right when he wrote the sixth symphony, and particularly this last movement, he’d reached a different state as a composer. And it’s, therefore, small wonder that he sought, to a large degree, that he’d achieved a different level. There is one other aspect I’d like to finish off with.

There’s been a lot of talk about the fact that nine days after Tchaikovsky, sorry, conducted the first, or the premier of the sixth symphony on the 5th of November in 1893, at the age of 53, he died. And there has been a suggestion that he knew he was dying and that he wrote this symphony, as it were, as almost a requiem for his own life. If you read a few biographies that I have, it doesn’t seem to make a huge amount of sense because it does appear that when he wrote this symphony, he was in good health, both mental and physical. He died because of cholera. Because he drunk water that he shouldn’t have drunk. And there was no real indication that when he wrote this symphony, he thought it was the end of his days. But what he did give us was an extraordinary musical expression of despair, of pain, of existential angst. In a way, if you listen to that symphony, both the beginning and the parody of triumph and the last movement, he has resolved to some considerable extent the battle he had with his earlier symphonies and his theme of fate. What he would’ve written thereafter, I do not know, but he gave us a sixth symphony.

And it’s almost unfair to say because he was such a popular composer 'cause of the melodies he wrote that there was not great depth in him. And I thought, therefore, that in a way, since we were talking about Russian composers, to actually at least look at a couple of these symphonies carefully will actually profit us. And, obviously, one of the problems I realised in doing this is one doesn’t have the right sound, but doubtless, you’ll go and listen to own recordings, draw your own inferences from these two magnificent symphonies. Thank you very much.

Q&A and Comments

I, there may be one or two questions. I did, yes. Yes, the Oboe player was fantastic. I know it’s, sadly. The orchestra conducted by Bernstein. No women musicians. Well, it was a Vienna Philharmonic and, at that particular point in time, Carol, no, there weren’t. But I doubt that Bernstein was, would not have had women there. And I agree with you that, Sandy, who says, “If you don’t want to clap for Tchaikovsky at the end of the third, you have to jump up and down for Lenny.” Oh my goodness. Most people say, rightly, or many people say, some we irritated by him. But, in my view, he had kind of more musical enthusiasm and vibe in his body than almost any other conductor one knows. Yes, it is full of yearning and pain. And it could have been part of a ballet.

Thank you very much to everybody for listening and goodnight to everybody.