Music Director
Piort Illyich Tchaikovsky
Symphony No.4 in F minor, Op.36
Beginning in 1876, Tchaikovsky received financial and emotional support from the wealthy but reclusive widow, Madam Nadezda von Meck. Her enthusiasm for the composer's music led her to give him an annual stipend of 600 pounds, allowing the composer to leave his teaching post at the Moscow Conservatory. They maintained an intimate relationship through correspondence alone, but they never met. Tchaikovsky dedicated the Symphony No. 4 to Madame von Meck, inscribing it "to my best friend." He sent von Meck a program for the symphony, one that he eventually discarded.
Tchaikovsky used the traditional four-movement form of the classic symphony, but the composer never felt comfortable with the constraints imposed by sonata allegro form. Tchaikovsky wrote: “All my life I have been much troubled by my inability to grasp and manipulate form in music. I fought hard against this defect, and can say with pride that I have achieved some progress, but I shall end my days without ever having written anything that is perfect in form.” Critics complained that the symphony seemed to have an undisclosed program, and that it sounded too much like a ballet score Tchaikovsky wrote:
“As to your remark about my symphony being programmatic, I quite agree, but don't see why you consider this a defect. On the contrary, I should be sorry if symphonies that mean nothing should flow from my pen, consisting solely of a progression of harmonies, rhythms, modulations. Most assuredly, my symphony has a programme, but one that cannot be expressed in words: the very attempt would be ludicrous. But is this not proper to a symphony, the most purely lyrical of musical forms?”
The first movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36, is in sonata form, in F minor, and opens with a brass theme, which returns in the fourth movement. Tchaikovsky described this theme as follows:
"Fate, the decisive force which prevents our hopes of happiness from being realized, which watches jealously to see that our bliss and peace are not complete and unclouded, and which, like the sword of Damocles, is suspended over our heads and perpetually poisons our souls." Tchaikovsky described the second movement as "... another phase of depression," the third “a procession of strange, wild and disjointed images,” and the finale "a picture of festive merriment of the people." He added: “I was terribly depressed last winter when I was composing this symphony, and it serves as a true echo of what I was going through at the time. But it is merely an echo.”
The second movement in B-flat is a contemplative evolving song with its expressive oboe and bassoon themes. Pizzicato strings play the third movement scherzo, the finale maintains a festive mood despite the return of the Fate motive. In the fourth movement Tchaikovsky quotes from an old folk tune, which describes a springtime scene as a group of unmarried women surrounds a birch tree and uses twigs to make wreaths. The wreaths are wedding wreaths, which are thrown into the water. Those whose wreaths float will marry, and those whose wreaths sink will not.
Tchaikovsky's music has remained popular because of his lyrical melodies, ingenious orchestrations, and his ability to vary and combine themes.
Tchaikovsky may have only been able to express with his music the deeply felt emotions of his tormented life. Even this forbidding theme is conquered by the festive opening melody, and the symphony closes with a brilliant coda. In Tchaikovsky's words, "Rejoice in the happiness of others, and life will still be possible."
Program notes by Beth Bergman Fisher