Symphony No. 5
A symphony that traces fate from foreboding to triumph. A single motto theme runs through all four movements, darkening and then blazing into victory.
Tchaikovsky wrote the Fifth between May and August 1888, a decade after the Fourth and after a long stretch in which he doubted his powers as a symphonist. He conducted the premiere himself at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in November 1888. It is dedicated to the German musician Theodor Avé-Lallemant. Even after finishing it, Tchaikovsky was uneasy, at one point calling it insincere and forced and judging it below the Fourth, though audiences soon disagreed.
Fate again binds the work together, but here through a single motto theme that appears in every movement. It begins in a dark, funereal tread in the low clarinets and is gradually transformed, ending as a broad major-key march that carries the finale from E minor to E major. The slow movement contains one of the most famous passages in the orchestral repertoire, a long horn solo of warm, aching lyricism. In place of a conventional scherzo, Tchaikovsky writes an elegant waltz, a rare choice in a symphony and a sign of his gift for the dance. The scoring throughout is full and glowing, and the cyclic return of the motto gives the whole work a strong sense of narrative.
Movements
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Serge Koussevitzky.