BBC Philharmonic: Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique

Raw nerves and restless hearts

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Yoel Gamzou conductor
Elena Urioste violin

Leonard Bernstein Overture to Candide
Erich Korngold Violin Concerto
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6, ‘Pathétique’

Tchaikovsky declared multiple times that his Sixth Symphony was ‘the best thing I ever composed or shall compose.’ It’s a piece about the journey towards death: of an expiring life-force that’s forced to confront the end in a way that his fateful Fourth and Fifth never quite manage. On this terrifically exciting journey, passion and pathos overflow.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a prodigy described as ‘truly astonishing’ by Richard Strauss, later bloomed into one of Hollywood’s most celebrated film composers. Material from four of his film scores was arranged into this 1945 concerto, which the composer ‘contemplated for a Caruso rather than a Paganini.’ Elena Urioste returns to sing out Korngold’s honey-sweet phrases.

To begin, it’s all the fun of the fair in Bernstein’s dashing Candide overture, a spirited mix of off-kilter rhythms, helter-skelter orchestration and sophisticated hat-tips to the overture masters.

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