Symphony No 6 in B minor, 'Pathétique'
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
✒️ 1893 | ⏰ 47 minutes
What's the story?
In 28 October 1893 Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere of his Sixth Symphony in St Petersburg. Nine days later, he was dead. Soon, rumours were circulating that he had foreseen his own demise. After all, the Symphony’s finale was not the usual upbeat conclusion but instead an Adagio (slow movement) marked ‘Lamentoso’ (mournfully); and the first movement quoted a funeral chant from the Russian Orthodox Requiem. Tchaikovsky most likely died of cholera – there was an epidemic at the time – but some have suggested he contracted the disease deliberately by drinking unboiled water. What’s for sure is that he reached a new expressive peak with this Symphony, which he thought ‘the best, and in particular, the most sincere of all my creations’.
Why is this piece so iconic?
The nickname ‘Pathétique’ is a garbling into French of the Russian word ‘Pateticheskaya’, meaning ‘passionate’ or ‘full of pathos’, so it’s no surprise that the Sixth Symphony carries a level of emotional turmoil and expressive extreme rarely heard before in a symphony. Tchaikovsky himself revealed in a letter to his nephew Vladimir ‘Bob’ Davydov that the Symphony had an underlying theme or narrative – but one, he said, ‘that will remain an enigma to everyone – let them guess’. While composing it, he ‘wept terribly’.
Tchaikovsky’s symphonies have been criticised for falling short of the intellectual rigour of the likes of Ludwig van Beethoven or Johannes Brahms. But Leonard Bernstein (the American conductor and longtime LSO collaborator) disagreed. Drawn to their ‘shattering contrasts’ and ‘striking opposites’, Bernstein believed these symphonies had a ‘place in history at the peak of 19th-century Romanticism’.
What is the music like?
The opening – a mournful bassoon solo – is hardly a sizzling curtain-raiser. The following music brings lightness but the tension soon builds. Out of this comes one of Tchaikovsky’s most yearning melodies, in the strings. Later (spoiler alert!) the music suddenly explodes and then burns with alarm and despair before brewing up a massive climax, which erupts in a slow, desperate, falling line in the strings (marked ‘as loudly as possible’) with answering brass and shuddering timpani.
The second movement is a kind of ‘broken’ waltz, with five beats to the bar instead of three. The darker middle section is underpinned by pulsing timpani. Ingeniously, this leads seamlessly back to a return of the strangely swaying waltz.
The third movement flickers with energy and, before long, a chipper march finds its voice in the clarinets: a tune Tchaikovsky saw as ‘solemnly triumphant’. Amid the exuberance and pomp are flashy, joyful displays of pinpoint precision and swirling scales in the orchestra.
Which brings us to the deeply lamenting finale. According to the late conductor Yuri Temirkanov, this shouldn’t sound too tearful. He believed, ‘Tchaikovsky leads his hero to his terrible end with such dignity. He knows that it’s inevitable.’
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Born: Votkinsk, Russia, 1840
Died: St Petersburg, Russia, 1893
'Tchaikovsky’s talent was the greatest of any Russian musician. His virtues … were his elegance and his wit.'
When Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky visited New York in 1891 to conduct at the opening of Carnegie Hall, he was feted in the American press as one of the world’s three greatest living composers. But although he was the first Russian composer to gain an international profile, back in Moscow his adoption of European models marked a contrast with the St Petersburg-based Russian nationalists – among them Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin and Mily Balakirev – of the group known as ‘The Five’ or ‘The Mighty Handful’.
Tchaikovsky lived during the Populist and Socialist Revolutionaries movements, who sought freedom from the Tsarist regime. The second half of the 19th century in Russia was also the time of the famed writers Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy. Tchaikovsky met Tolstoy on several occasions, and took pride in the fact that the writer had been moved to tears by the slow movement in a performance of his String Quartet No 1.
Tchaikovsky’s unique gift for spinning long, lyrical melodies, his dramatic sense and his heart-on-sleeve expression have led him to be dismissed for not being radical enough. But these features remain among the most loved qualities of his work. In addition to six symphonies, his ballets, particularly The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, imbued ballet music with a new dramatic sweep and imagination. The first of his three Piano Concertos and his Violin Concerto remain among the most performed of their type.
Keep Listening
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Gianandrea Noseda
LSO Principal Guest Conductor
Watch Gianandrea Noseda on stage and there’s an unmistakable intensity to his communication. He has held positions with orchestras from Pittsburgh to Rotterdam and from Tel Aviv to Girona. Before joining the LSO family in 2016 as a Principal Guest Conductor he had built a reputation in the UK as Music Director of the BBC Philharmonic for nine years (2002 to 2011). Born in Milan, Noseda was Music Director of the Teatro Regio in Turin for over a decade and before that had spent 10 years as Principal Guest Conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. His dual experience in the two great opera traditions of Italy and Russia is unique, and there is a dramatic, storytelling quality to his music-making. As he says, the challenge of a conductor is ‘to be able to keep the tension from the first note to the last’.
Your best memory with the LSO?
The first five minutes of my first rehearsal with them.
A piece you recommend listening to next?
Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 5
The London Symphony Orchestra
At the London Symphony Orchestra, we strive to inspire hearts and minds through world-leading music-making. We were established in 1904 as one of the first orchestras shaped by its musicians, and today we’re ranked among the world’s top orchestras. As Resident Orchestra at the Barbican since the Centre opened in 1982, we perform some 70 concerts here every year. We also perform over 50 concerts a year to audiences throughout the UK and worldwide, and deliver a far-reaching programme of recordings, live-streams and on-demand broadcasts.
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On Stage
Leader
Carmine Lauri
First Violins
Jérôme Benhaim
Clare Duckworth
Ginette Decuyper
Maxine Kwok
William Melvin
Stefano Mengoli
Elizabeth Pigram
Claire Parfitt
Laurent Quénelle
Harriet Rayfield
Morane Cohen-Lamberger
Eleanor Fagg
Caroline Frenkel
Grace Lee
Julia Rumley
Second Violins
Julián Gil Rodríguez
Thomas Norris
Sarah Quinn
Miya Väisänen
Matthew Gardner
Naoko Keatley
Alix Lagasse
Belinda McFarlane
Iwona Muszynska
Csilla Pogány
Andrew Pollock
Paul Robson
Louise Shackelton
Anna Takeda
Violas
Eivind Ringstad
Gillianne Haddow
Malcolm Johnston
Matan Gilitchensky
Anna Bastow
Thomas Beer
Steve Doman
Sofia Silva Sousa
Robert Turner
Michelle Bruil
Clifton Harrison
Alistair Scahill
Cellos
Rebecca Gilliver
Alastair Blayden
Salvador Bolón
Ève-Marie Caravassilis
Daniel Gardner
Laure Le Dantec
Amanda Truelove
Joanna Twaddle
Judith Fleet
Henry Hargreaves
Double Basses
Lorraine Campet
Patrick Laurence
Thomas Goodman
Joe Melvin
Jani Pensola
Chaemun Im
Simon Oliver
Adam Wynter
Flutes
Gareth Davies
Daniel Shao
Piccolo
Sharon Williams
Oboes
Timothy Rundle
Rosie Jenkins
Clarinets
Nicholas Rodwell
Chi-Yu Mo
Bass Clarinet
Kenny Keppel
Bassoons
Rachel Gough
Joost Bosdijk
Horns
Timothy Jones
Jonathan Maloney
Daniel Curzon
Andrew Sutton
Eleanor Blakeney
Trumpets
James Fountain
Will O'Sullivan
Katie Smith
Trombones
Peter Moore
Jonathan Hollick
Bass Trombone
Paul Milner
Tuba
Ben Thomson
Timpani
Nigel Thomas
Percussion
Neil Percy
David Jackson
Programme Notes Edward Bhesania. Edward Bhesania is a music journalist and editor who writes for The Stage, The Strad and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
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