Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4

Bedřich Smetana
(1824-1884)

The Bartered Bride: Overture

In this breathless overture, Smetana encapsulates the vitality and bustle, as well as the rustic charm, of a Czech village in festive mood. This was the first time Czech village life had been portrayed believably in opera. Although premiered inauspiciously in the shadow of a looming (though in the event, short) war with Bismarck’s Prussia, The Bartered Bride survived the fiasco of its truncated opening season in the oppressive midsummer heat of 1866 to win the undying affection of Czech people (and, subsequently, audiences throughout the world).

Smetana’s comedy is peopled with characters his audiences would recognise and empathise with, individuals experiencing the deep human emotions of hope and fear, venality and cunning, confusion and despair and, above all, unquenchable young love. In the ‘all’s fair’ context of love and war, not even a dubious device by which the happy outcome turns on a piece of shameless deception can arouse disquiet. Thus not only the bride is won, but a questionable cash bonus as well. (The opera is literally ‘The Sold Bride’, not ‘bartered’.)

The overture essentially sets the scene of festivity on the village green. The three main motifs (bustling, suspenseful string figures in the opening, a polkalike subject which foreshadows the brilliant national dances to come, and a winsome, contrasting oboe melody) will all be heard again at the climax of the second act as the bridal-sale contract is signed before the outraged village-folk as indignant witnesses.

Adapted from an annotation by Anthony Cane © 2005

First performance:
30 May 1866, Prague. Composer conducting.

First WASO performance:
24-25 July 2009. Jakub Hrůša, conductor

Instrumentation:
piccolo, two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; four horns, two trumpets and three trombones; timpani and strings.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(1840-1893)

Symphony No.4 in F minor, Op.36

Andante sostenuto – Moderato con anima
– Moderato assai, quasi Andante – Allegro
vivo
Andantino in modo di canzona
Scherzo (Pizzicato ostinato) – Allegro
Finale (Allegro con fuoco)

‘The Introduction is the kernel of the whole symphony, without question its main idea. This is Fate, the force of destiny…’ This could be a description of the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth. But the words are Tchaikovsky’s and they describe the strident horn fanfares of his Fourth Symphony.

Tchaikovsky’s patron, Nadezhda von Meck, heard in the symphony a profound emotional drama. After the premiere in 1878 she asked him whether the symphony had a definite program, a literary underpinning. Tchaikovsky had told others that the symphony’s drama couldn’t be formulated in words, but for von Meck, who paid his bills, he went to the trouble of finding those words..

…in truth, it is a hard question to answer…In our symphony there is a program (that is, the possibility of explaining in words what it seeks to express)…Of course, I can do this here only in general terms.
The Introduction is the kernel of the whole symphony, without question its main idea. This is Fate, the force of destiny, which ever prevents our pursuit of happiness from reaching its goal…It is invincible, inescapable. One can only resign oneself and lament fruitlessly. This disconsolate and despairing feeling grows ever stronger and more intense. Would it not be better to turn away from reality and immerse oneself in dreams?

Tchaikovsky continues, identifying musical ideas representing tender dreams and fervent hope, then a climax suggesting the possibility of happiness, before the Fate theme awakens us from the dreams…

And thus, all life is the ceaseless alternation of bitter reality with evanescent visions and dreams of happiness…There is no refuge. We are buffeted about by this sea until it seizes us and pulls us down to the bottom. There you have roughly the program of the first movement.

All this matches the emotional character of the first movement – the music’s ‘profound, terrifying despair’ – and if we allow for Tchaikovsky’s personal turmoil at the time (he’d emerged from an ill-advised marriage) then it could be given an autobiographical interpretation. More striking, though, is Tchaikovsky’s handling of his two principal ideas: Fate and ‘self’. Fate is the fanfare (actually a polonaise, writes Richard Taruskin); ‘self’ is the first real melody – a glorious waltz.

These two ideas collide in the music. Copying a dramatic strategy from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Tchaikovsky superimposes his dances, matching three bars of waltz time to one bar of the slower, aristocratic polonaise (also in three). Then, in the coda, we hear the ‘complete subjection of self to Fate’ and the waltz returns one last time, stretched to match the pulse of the polonaise – hardly a waltz at all.

The effect of this collision is one of music – and a composer – torn between extremes. Tchaikovsky’s instinct was for lyrical outpourings (his waltz), but he understood that to be a symphonist in 1878 meant observing the symphonic conventions established by Beethoven. The Fate fanfare gave him a motto he could manipulate.

Tchaikovsky’s student, Sergei Taneyev, observed that the ‘disproportionately long’ first movement gave ‘the appearance of a symphonic poem to which three movements have been appended fortuitously to make up a symphony’. Perhaps Tchaikovsky agreed: after the wealth of detail for the first movement, his descriptive program peters out.

The second movement is summed up as an expression of ‘the melancholy feeling that arises in the evening as you sit alone, worn out from your labours’. The Scherzo appears to contain no definite feelings at all: ‘One’s mind is a blank, and the imagination has free rein.’ But the Scherzo is one of the most effective parts of the symphony – the relentless plucking of pizzicato strings combining with brilliant writing for woodwinds and brass, in particular the scampering piccolo.

In the Finale, Tchaikovsky chooses a Russian folk song, ‘The Birch Tree’, as the theme for a set of variations. He gives the apparently cheerful scenario of holiday festivities a depressing cast: ‘If you can find no impulse for joy within yourself, look at others…Never say that all the world is sad. You have only yourself to blame…Why not rejoice through the joys of others?’ It’s as if we are to hear the finale as festivity – but second hand. If this isn’t resignation to Fate, nothing is.

Yvonne Frindle © 2009/2013

First performance:
22 February 1878, Moscow, Nikolay Rubinstein conducting.

First WASO performance:
4 May 1940. Georg Schnéevoigt, conductor.

Most recent WASO performance:
20-21 November 2020. Guy Noble, conductor.

Instrumentation:
two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings.

Nik Babic
Viola

When did you realize that you wanted to become a professional musician?
I think I had it on the radar ever since I started playing music. As I made little achievements along the way it became more of a reality and so I naturally progressed into it. I gave myself five years of auditioning at the end of which time, if unsuccessful, I would explore other career paths. Two years into it I got the WASO job so didn’t have to think too hard.

What is the best thing about being a musician in WASO?
Our work is quite diverse in terms of the styles of music we get to perform and venues where we get to work. Unlike most other orchestras around the country, we regularly perform with the opera and ballet companies so the repertoire and the way we play is guided by the role of the orchestra in these productions. I love playing in the pit and being part of a larger whole during these seasons. I also love travelling around the state as part of our regional touring.

What qualities are most important in order to play the viola?
There are no particular qualities compared to other musicians, however there is one difference for violas: as the violas are in the geographical centre of the orchestra we don’t have to think too much about playing ahead of the beat. Some of the instruments at the very back have to do that most of the time in order to compensate for the distance. We get to enjoy a true hi-fi surround sound all the time!

Do you get nervous before a performance? I
used to get very nervous but these days not as much. I think that most musicians go through varying degrees of nervousness in the lead up to a performance. It all stems from our tendency to be perfectionists when it comes to our own playing and the desire to not let the orchestra as a group down.

What’s your favourite thing about WA?
I absolutely love the WA landscape and the sheer vastness of it. For someone who spent most of his life in the urban sprawls in Europe and the US these open spaces and the emptiness of it all still feels just amazing.

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