Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 4 in F minor, op. 36 Pyotr Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 in F minor, op. 36

“There is not a single bar in this – my Fourth Symphony – that I have not felt deeply, and that is not an echo of my innermost stirrings of the soul.” Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote this after completing what was, up to that point, his most important orchestral work – composed during a period of profound personal crisis. At the same time as he was working on his symphony and on the opera Eugene Onegin, both begun in the spring of 1877 and completed around the turn of the year 1877–78, the central problem of his private life came to a head: in order to conceal his homosexuality behind the façade of a respectable marriage, he hastily married a student who was passionately in love with him. But the supposed rescue proved catastrophic. The correspondence with his patron Nadezhda von Meck saved him from the misery; to her – “my best friend” – he dedicated the Fourth Symphony. He also outlined for her the work’s inner programme.

The composer works here with a motto theme exposed right at the beginning and running through the symphony – a kind of idée fixe. This piercing, fanfare-like brass motif Tchaikovsky identified as “Fate”: “a power that hangs over our heads like the sword of Damocles and ceaselessly poisons our soul. It is invincible; one will never overcome it.” Several times, this motif intervenes in the course of the first movement, fatefully distorting the movement’s actual themes more and more. The first main theme meanders in descending lines that repeatedly begin anew “in the manner of a waltz”, with the accents continually obscured. A second idea, described by Tchaikovsky as an escape into a dream, flits past like a ghost; into the fragile woodwind melodies, the strings breathe with tremolo. And when the timpani strikes its dull notes over more than two dozen bars, disaster gathers – inexorably, Fate returns.

The two middle movements form islands of contemplation and fantasy, oscillating between melancholy and exuberance. “In modo di canzona”, the oboe sings its dreamlike song in the Andantino, solemnly accompanied by the strings. The “happy moments” Tchaikovsky hints at soon vanish again: at the end, the song theme sounds pianissimo in the bassoon, like an echo from other worlds. The Scherzo depicts “strange, disconnected images” of the imagination: the feather-light outer sections are entrusted to the string instruments, which pluck without interruption – a startling, elfin, unreal effect. For the middle section they leave the field to the lively woodwinds and to march-like brass sounds, but then the strings creep back in, still “pizzicato ostinato”.

In “folk-holiday mood”, the Finale bursts forth, noisily fixing its gaze on the unattainable happiness of others. Tchaikovsky carries the melody of the folk song “In the field stood a birch tree” through the orchestra in several variations, until the fateful fanfare suddenly blares again and silences everything. Yet from the ruins, hope begins to sprout; night yields to light, and gradually the music regains the strength for the final theme and a triumphant apotheosis. Whether this victorious turn is real or merely an illusion – that remains an open question.