Leader, PHILIP WHITEWAY
Conductor, E. GODFREY BROWN
Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
1. Andante-Allegro con anima ; 2. Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza; 3. Waltz: Allegro moderato; 4. Finale : Andante maestoso—Allegro vivace-Moderato assai e molto maestoso — Presto — Molto meno mosso
Tchaikovsky began his Fifth Symphony in June, 1888, with great difficulty', though ' inspiration seemed to come later', and finished it by the middle of August. Like its predecessor, the Fourth, it is dominated by a motto-theme stated at the very beginning—a theme that savagely interrupts the passionate love-song of the slow movement and falls like a melancholy shadow across the end of the waltz, but which is triumphantly transformed in the finale.
A writer in the musical Press has recently pointed out that this motto-theme appears to have been borrowed from Glinka's opera, A Life for the Tsar, which he was re-studying at the very time he began the Symphony. The clue to the programmatic meaning ' of the motto-theme may therefore possibly. lie in the words to which Glinka's phrase is set: ' Do not turn to sorrow (the hour of our re-union) '.
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