OU on the BBC: Discovering Tchaikovsky - Discovering the Symphonist

Production team publicity shot

“I definitely find it my very best, and in particular, the most sincere of all my compositions. I love it as I have never loved any of my musical children.”

In the second programme, Charles Hazlewood and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra explore Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony - his greatest orchestral work, and his own particular favourite. As the scale of the work is huge, this programme will focus in particular on its monumental first movement.

In this work, Tchaikovsky’s last completed masterpiece, premièred only 9 days before his death, the composer redefined the notion of what a symphony could be, and enlarged the possibilities of symphonic vision for a generation of composers to come.

For Charles Hazlewood, the essential point is that this work is less about continuity of thought, than striking juxtaposition - not so much an experience of a rich, well-ordered argument than a succession of extreme and intense moments which create a new kind of symphonic adventure. Synthesising his vast imagination and experience of writing operas and ballets, this piece is all about melodrama; about bringing the notion of the tragic to this purely orchestral form.

“A symphony should express everything for which there are no words.”

After introducing us to the scope of this work through an outline of its four movements (the superstructure of its first movement, the extraordinary five-beat waltz, the profoundly un-frivolous “scherzo” and the quiet catastrophe of its final movement), Charles turns his attention to the immense, 20-minute opening movement.

Throughout this movement he finds telling examples of all the qualities that for him define the genius of mature Tchaikovsky, and within the movement as a whole he demonstrates the composer’s virtuosic mastery of staggeringly ambitious formal design in the creation of what was perhaps the most compelling emotional journey ever created in music.

Concluding the programme, Charles conducts a full performance of the first movement of the Pathetique.

First broadcast: Saturday 27 Jan 2007 on BBC FOUR