Symphony No. 6 "Pathétique"

Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich

album cover

The Illest from Ilyich

There's a fine line between deep personal pathos and self-absorbed bathos, and with this, his last symphony, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky rides it like a daredevil. He 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, with no redeeming third-act heroics waiting in the wings.

The rare symphonic work that doesn't end on a note of triumph, this was written quickly, in a matter of weeks during the spring of 1893. But it feels like the product of marathon brooding. Its subtitle, suggested by Tchaikovsky's brother Modest, translates from Russian not as "pathetic" but as "deeply affecting the emotions," and that's an excellent description of its lure. Both the opening movement—a structurally innovative fever-dream of episodic bursts and impulsive mood changes—and the lurching, decidedly unheroic odd-meter 5/4 "waltz" are saturated with feeling, governed by the composer's pursuit of intense melodic rapture.

Composed in the wake of his failed marriage, Symphony No. 6 is regarded as Tchaikovsky's masterwork. He conducted its premiere in October of 1893, and died nine days later, a victim of cholera.

Of the many versions of this piece available, this one recorded in 1956 by the Leningrad, with Russian conductor Evgeny Mravinsky, is particularly radiant. It's supple in ways Russian orchestras of the cold-war era often were not, and fully charged with the romance Tchaikovsky embedded in the score. The package includes Tchaikovsky's fourth and fifth symphonies as well.

Genre: Classical
Released: 1961, Deutsche Grammophon
Key Tracks: first movement.
Catalog Choice: 1812 Overture, Capriccio Italien, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Daniel Barenboim, cond.)
Next Stop: Sergey Rachmaninoff: Works for Piano and Orchestra, Raphael Orozco, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Edo de Waart, cond.)
Book Pages: 768–769

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