Programme
Gabriela Lena Frank
Three Latin-American Dances
Béla Bartók
Piano Concerto No. 2
Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 4 in F minor
Artists
Elim Chan Conductor
- Pierre-Laurent Aimard Piano
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
About the concert
There is hardly a work by Tchaikovsky that we know as much about as his Fourth Symphony. This is mainly due to the fact that, during its creation, he exchanged numerous letters with Nadeshda von Meck, the wealthy widow of an industrialist. She was an ardent admirer of the composer, whom she supported most generously and as a patroness for many years. From their correspondence we learn that the motif exposed in the opening bars is to be understood as the musical figure of “fatum”, i.e. of fate as that “fatal power that prevents our pursuit of happiness from reaching its goal. That power is overwhelming and invincible.” In explicit reference to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, however, there is a dramaturgy leading into the light, in which dream and dance sequences play just as much a role before the optimistically ending finale as a scherzo executed in continuous pizzicato – which comes along, as it were, on the tiptoes of the sound.
