RO NOW: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4

What are you going to listen to?

Czech village

Bedřich Smetana began his career as an ardent Czech nationalist, writing patriotic songs and even standing on the barricades in Prague during the revolution of 1848 to resist the troops of the Austrian ruler. But in his later years, he let his patriotism shine through music above all, first with a dramatic opera The Brandenburgers in Bohemia from which he even won a prize. Then he sought refuge in the lighter genre with his folkloric opera The Sold Bride. It was a comedy, almost a farce, entirely in the form of the German Singspiel, but with much appealing music in the style of Czech folk music. It would become, after a somewhat hesitant beginning at its premiere in 1866, one of Smetana's greatest successes. Already the overture puts you in a cheerful mood and, with its cheerful Bohemian folk melodies, immediately moves you into the atmosphere of a cozy Czech village where the comedy is set.

Get yourself together

Two women were of enormous influence on Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's life. Positive was the friendship with Nadezhda von Meck who was his great support and companion materially as well as spiritually. Although, at her request, they never actually met, their extensive correspondence speaks of a warm friendship. Downright negative was his relationship with his student Antonina Milyukova. To quell all the rumors about his homosexuality, he married her out of the blue. Of course, it ended in a fiasco and they were divorced after only six months. It gave the composer's already not very strong nervous system a serious blow, from which he recovered only slowly. It was precisely at this time that he wrote his Symphony No. 4 , which bears witness to this difficult time. It is sometimes called Tjsaikovsky's "symphony of fate. It immediately presents itself in the trumpet signal in the first bars, which recurs regularly as a leitmotif and cannot be supplanted even by some lighter melodies here and there. In the slow movement, Tchaikovsky sees himself as an old man passing his life by. But then fate is not so bad. There follows a scherzo with mere pizzicatos. He sees himself with a good glass of wine in hand in which, somewhat tipsy, he dispels the gloom with more cheerful thoughts. It succeeds excellently. The finale is of a jubilant mood, in which Tchaikovsky indulges in an almost overconfident exuberance. 'Get yourself together and don't say that everything in the world is only doom and gloom. Joy is a simple but great force.' Even a Last return of the fate motif of the beginning cannot dispel the bliss.

Kees Wisse