Why Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony?

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Come hear this concert April 17 at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts.

Recently, some people (including some MusicaNova's Board members) have wondered how the orchestra would do with standard repertoire, and so I agreed to do the Tchaikovsky Symphony no.5 with the group, a work that is the very epitome of standard repertoire. But as usual, I had other reasons for choosing the piece, and some of them might be interesting.

In this case, one reason I chose the work is that conductors have taken such radically different approaches to the piece. Given that Tchaikovsky has provided metronome markings, detailed articulations and numerous indications for tempo modifications, this may seem odd. But there are performance traditions, and the music itself demands interpretation in the transitions between the tempo modifications, which are handled in many different ways, and conductors also selectively ignore what the composer asks for.

I find it interesting that the work was not a success at the premiere, and that it only became popular when Arthur Nikisch took it on tour with the Berlin Philharmonic. He never recorded the work, but the existing Nikisch recordings give us a pretty good idea of what he would likely do in a piece like that, and I think it is fair to say that there would be a lot of tempo modifications, and that there would be very intense accelerandos through various repetitive sections of the score. There would also reliably be lots of string portamento, and a great deal of drive and power. People who heard the premiere (with Tchaikovsky conducting) and then later heard Nikisch commented that the composer was softer grained and less extreme in his interpretation of the score. A curious point-two bars before the Presto section near the end, Nikisch added a cymbal crash-which was approved by the composer!(no, I will not do that!)

I tend to think that some of the performance traditions we often hear in the score go back to Nikisch. The steady acceleration of the first Allegro theme in the first movement, several unwritten ritards in the slow movement and the faster general tempo in the Finale all sound like Nikisch, and may have become part of tradition because of him. There are regional differences as well, which can be heard easily by listening to a Russian Orchestra and a German Orchestra play the piece back to back.

It is worth listening to old recordings to hear how people who may have played the work when the composer was alive interpret it. The early Chicago Symphony recording with Frederick Stock is a revelation in its way, seeming quite unpredictable by modern standards but very interesting and very good. Mengelberg was a very idiosyncratic conductor, and his interpretation from 1928 shows that, while Stokowski's 1923 version of the slow movement is actually the least odd of the early recordings I have heard. (there is also a recording of this movement with Albert Coates and the London Symphony from 1922 that is rather straightforward, but the playing level is poor, which gets in the way).

But this is one piece where even modern performances differ radically from one another, so whenever you go to a concert that features the work it can be like hearing a totally new piece. The differences seem most radical in the last movement, probably because it is somewhat tricky to pull off successfully. On the other hand, there are many possible solutions to the problems here. Some take a faster tempo for the main fast theme, some slow down more than Tchaikovsky indicated when the first movement theme comes back late in the movement (others speed it up more than he indicated), and many of these approaches, when well integrated into the overall conception, can work well. On Youtube you can see both Mravinsky and Bernstein do the finale, and both versions work, although they could not be more different.

Perhaps this is one thing that attracts me to the piece-it can be both new and familiar at the same time, a contradiction I am more than happy to exploit!