Gre Brouwenstyn (soprano)
London Symphony Orchestra
(Leader, George Stratton )
Conductor,
Sir Malcolm Sargent
Tchaikovsky Concert
Flower Waltz (Nutcracker Suite)
7.55 app. Tatiana's Letter Song
(Eugene Onegin )
8.7 a.pp. Symphony No. 5, in E minor
From the Royal Albert Hall , London
Although there is little doubt that Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 in E minor was written with some kind of a programme at the back of the composer's mind, he has given no indication as to what it might be. Certainly we know that at that time he was very pessimistic over his art, and in a letter to his great friend Nadejda von Meek he said he was anxious to prove not only to the outside world but to himself that he was not finished as a composer, and he mentioned that he was at work on a new symphony. This new symphony proved to be the No. 5 in E minor.
Except for the last movement the greater part of the symphony is tragic in character, and, like the Fourth Symphony, the work is dominated throughout by a motto theme:
(Continued in next column) a gloomy melody that is' heard at the outset J on the clarinet over ar. accompaniment for strings and bassoon. Curiously, the theme itself is a quotation from the aria ' Do not turn to sorrow the hour of our reunion ' in the first act of Glinka's opera A Lift for the Tsar.