Symphony No.6 "Pathétique" in B minor, Op.74

The SYMPHONY No. 6 is PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY’s final completed symphony written between February and the end of August 1893 in Klin, near Moscow. At the begging, the composer originally wanted to call it "Life" and, according to some contemporaries, the work was implicitly dedicated to his nephew Vladimir (Bob) Davydov, to whom he was particularly attached. The title Pathetique was claimed to be given by his brother Modest Tchaikovsky, and it is entirely in keeping with the character of the music. The pessimism and profound hopelessness of the Symphony No 6 correspond to the atmosphere of pessimism and resignation that dominated European culture at the end of the Romantic century. In fact, for Tchaikovsky the Eighties of the XIX c., were a time of intensification of his musical and social work. After years spent travelling throughout various cities of Europe, he settled in Klin, took up the post of Director of the Moscow Section of the Russian Musical Society, participated again in the life of the Moscow Conservatory, appeared as a conductor in Russia and abroad, and enjoyed sensational success with concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York, in Philadelphia and Baltimore. In 1884 he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, Alexander III granted him a pension for life, and in 1893 he was honoured in London with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of Cambridge University. But his activity as a composer declined, the loss of some of his loved ones, as well as his cooled relationship and terminated correspondence with his long-time patroness and spiritual friend Nadezhda von Meck, increasingly intensified his sense of loneliness and doom, his mind overwhelmed by the thought of death. The theme of Fatum, which pervades most of his mature works, acquired in his late last opuses – in the Symphony No 6, as well as in the opera Dame of Spades, composed a few years before it - the sense of inevitable tragic predestination. It was not until the end of 1889 that Tchaikovsky wrote to a relative: "I am terribly anxious to write some grand symphony which will be a kind of conclusion to my whole composing career..." And the Symphony No 6 turns out to be indeed as if his foreboding farewell to the world and life. The logic of the unusually constructed form - from the resigned sorrow of the 'fateful' opening theme, through the elegiac waltz (in the unusual 5 time size! ) in the second movement and the whirling march in the third one, to the slow finale fading into five times pianissimo - suggests with such force the inner tragic despair that Mily Balakirev once spontaneously exclaimed, "What must one have suffered to write such a work..." It was premiered on October 16^th 1893 in St Petersburg, conducted by Tchaikovsky himself, at that last concert nine days before his mysterious sudden death. His famous Piano Concerto No 1 was also performed that evening.