Classical Music Playlist, August 26, 2024
Listen for the theme played by clarinets and bassoon at the very opening of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. It recurs throughout the symphony, expressed in different moods. In the symphony’s opening notes, it sounds positively funereal. At the end of the final movement over 40 minutes later, the theme has transformed into a triumphant celebration. Tchaikovsky wrote in his notebooks that the somber introduction is “a complete resignation before fate.” The exhilarating finale, then, is clearly a conquest of it. Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 is today’s Midday Masterpiece.