The composer’s Fourth has been the subject of years of misunderstandings with regard to it’s creation, and inspiration. Graham dispels some of the myths.

 

Tchaikovsky’s Fourth symphony is among the most popular and most frequently-performed orchestral works in the canon, and it’s fashionable to spend a lot of time and energy trying to describe what it is “about”. During the Soviet era there was an official line which was largely accepted without question in the West. Tchaikovsky was portrayed as a closeted, self-hating homosexual who tried to “go straight” by entering into a marriage with a suicidal nymphomaniac. This official line continues with Tchaikovsky attempting suicide soon after his marriage and pouring out his terror and turmoil in this symphony and the opera Yevgeny Onegin.

With the fall of the USSR in 1991 and the opening up of Russian archives to musicologists, not to mention a more humane view of homosexuality, a more accurate picture of Tchaikovsky’s emotional...