Born on May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Russian Empire; died on November 6, 1893, in Saint Petersburg.
Symphony No. 5
Andante - Allegro con anima
Andante cantabile con alcuna licenza
Valse: Allegro moderato
Finale: Andante maestoso - Allegro vivace
Composed: May-August 1888
Estimated length: 45 minutes
First performance: November 17, 1888, in St. Petersburg, with the composer conducting.
First Nashville Symphony performance: December 12, 1950, with William Strickland conducting at the Ryman Auditorium.
We have another important patron of the arts, Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck, to thank for enabling the conditions behind some of the greatest compositions of Tchaikovsky (one of Leonard Slatkin’s longstanding specialties). The highly independent-minded atheist Meck and the gay, religiously inclined Tchaikovsky engaged in a kind of platonic love affair during which they kept a physical distance, never meeting in person (aside from an unplanned, wordless encounter), and yet shared intimate confessions via letters.
In the wake of the composer’s ill-advised attempt at marriage with one of his former students, Tchaikovsky embarked on a remarkable creative phase, completing his Fourth Symphony and interpreting it at length for Madame Meck as a dramatization of the power that “Fate” holds over human happiness. He dedicated that work to her as a co-creator (referring to the Fourth as “our symphony”).
Many of the concerns the Fourth addresses continued to preoccupy Tchaikovsky in his subsequent symphonic endeavors, including the Fifth Symphony. The idea of a darkly ominous, inescapable Fate—as both a dramatic character and a musical presence—recurs obsessively in the last three of Tchaikovsky’s numbered symphonies, as well as in the Manfred Symphony (based on Lord Byron’s verse play) and in such operas as Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades. Following the Fourth and Manfred, Tchaikovsky composed his Fifth Symphony at a rapid pace, between May and August 1888.
This time, the composer declined to provide a programmatic description beyond a few brief remarks he noted in a sketch: a “complete bow before Fate” or “Providence” for the slow introduction and, for the first movement, “grumbling, doubt, complaint, reproaches … Can one not throw oneself into the embrace of faith? A marvelous program, if only it can be executed.”
Still, with its use of a recurring motto idea, the Fifth’s overall design echoes that of the Fourth Symphony. The biographer John Wiley observes that “references to fate and faith resonate with Tchaikovsky’s preoccupation with mortality at the time of composition … It is the gateway to his late period.” In his letters to Meck, the composer confessed his contradictory assessments of the Fifth Symphony, both while it was in progress and following its first performances—at times comparing it unfavorably to the Fourth.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
The moody introduction bears a kinship with the main theme of the first movement, which is first given by clarinets and bassoons. No sooner does Tchaikovsky seem poised to make a powerful restatement of the theme near the end of the movement than he dims the volume and darkens the texture in a kind of anticlimax—as if to indicate a hopeless circle being traced back to the brooding depths where he began. It will be left up to the finale to resolve this tension.
The Andante begins with another variation on the deep melancholy of the opening. The tune has been said to derive from a sausage seller’s street cry. Decades later, in the 1930s, its fate was to be recycled as a popular American song called “Moon Love.” In lieu of a scherzo, Tchaikovsky explores a dreamy sensibility in the brief third movement, which takes the form of a waltz that charms with its disarming naïveté.
The finale mirrors the overall structure of the first movement, with a slow introduction that segues into an Allegro vivace of breathtaking energy. But where the opening movement had culminated in an anticlimactic fadeout, Tchaikovsky stages a triumphant breakthrough to end the work in a spirit of unbridled joy.
Scored for 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings.
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
Back