Norfolk Symphony Orchestra

The whole of Tchaikovsky's life seems to have been full of unusual incidents. For instance, he was supported for fourteen years by Nadezhda von Meck, the widow of a rich railroad engineer. He saw her twice but they never spoke. Madame von Meck wrote to Tchaikovsky, “There was a time when I was very anxious to make your personal acquaintance: but now the more you fascinate me the more I fear your acquaintanceship; I prefer to think of you from afar, to hear you speak in your music and to share your feelings through it.” At the same time as this strange relationship started, Tchaikovsky received a love-letter from one of his pupils at the Moscow Conservatoire, Antonina Ivanovna Miliukova. He went to see her but confessed that all he could feel for her was sympathy and gratitude. Fearing that his indifference would prove fatal to her and in a mistaken surge of chivalry, he proposed. They were married in Moscow in 1877 but, after only a few months of living together, Tchaikovsky persuaded his brother, Anatol, to send him a fake telegram giving him the excuse to flee the matrimonial home. He arrived in St. Petersburg in a state bordering on insanity, had a nervous breakdown and was taken away to Switzerland and Italy to recuperate. It was at this time that von Meck induced him to accept an annuity of six hundred pounds thus freeing him from all financial worry and enabling him to devote his entire time to creative work. The standard view of a composer is as a penniless and starving wretch living in a garret. Tchaikovsky was fortunate to be granted a further life pension when he returned to his native land in 1887, this time from the Czar of all Russia. He was now a rich man and conscious of the esteem in which his music was held internationally. Of course, riches and praise do not always soothe the inner conflict. On the evening of 1st November 1893, Tchaikovsky dined with friends, went to the theatre and sat drinking until two in the morning. The next day he complained of indigestion and insomnia, drinking only a glass of unboiled water. That glass of water has been responsible for some flights of fancy. It has been suggested that the composer deliberately took contaminated water in order to commit suicide before details of his homosexuality were published! Whatever the truth, he did die, seemingly of cholera, five days later.

Tchaikovsky wrote his fifth symphony in 1888 conducting its first performance in St. Petersburg on November 17th of that year. It was eleven years since his successful fourth symphony and he expressed doubts both during the new symphony's composition and after its première. He wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, in August 1888, “It seems to me I have not failed, and that it is good.” After conducting it in Prague, however, he wrote, “It is a failure; there is something repellent, something superfluous and insincere that the public instinctively recognizes.” Yet in the spring of the next year he could write, “I like it far better now.” Tchaikovsky did not find the Austro-German heritage of symphonic structure, developed by his contemporaries Brahms and Bruckner, as easy as opera or ballet. His method of composition was closer to Liszt's tone-poem style favouring the statement and re-statement of short sequences over the contemporary mantra of thematic growth. His undoubted success in creating convincing large-scale structures is due to his inspired gift for melodic and harmonic invention. The fourth symphony had its Fate motto and in the fifth symphony an eight note motif provides a unifying link to all of the movements. Its importance is immediately apparent; darkly portrayed by the clarinets, this motif is the first musical idea heard in the wondrously sombre slow introduction. All this is but a prelude to the main body of the first movement where, again, the clarinet outlines an opening theme which is expanded and developed with subtlety and immense power before eventually reaching a quiet resolution. The slow movement is a joy of melody! After the rich opening string chords, the horn is given a most beautiful melody carried forward by the oboe. Already the composer has stated the themes that will lead this sublime music to its calm resolution. The third movement is a waltz in the sunny key of A major. Two flowing melodic sections surround a scintillating and virtuosic episode - the dovetailing of this passage back into the charming melody is just perfect. A short coda introduces the motto theme and the movement ends with a real swagger. The opening of the Finale follows a course similar to the first movement, this time with the strings given the motto theme. The ensuing furore of sound and excitement hardly ever subsides ending with forcefully reiterated chords from the whole orchestra, a passage of such strength that it has often been mistaken at concerts for the ending of the symphony! However, Tchaikovsky has not finished with his motto which is now stated with great confidence by the strings followed by thrillingly majestic trumpets. There is just time for an exhilarating dash for the end only to be interrupted by a flourish from the trumpets and horns before the final great chords are struck.