Symphony No. 5

At a glance

• What it isthe first movement of Symphony No. 5 in E minor. It begins with a slow Andante introduction and continues Allegro con anima.
• Who, when, whywritten in the summer of 1888 by the forty-eight-year-old Tchaikovsky at his country house in Frolovskoye near Moscow. He conducted the first performance himself in St Petersburg that November.
• What to listen forhow the clarinets' theme from the introduction reappears in this and later movements.

Listen for

• The introductiontwo clarinets sing the theme low and dark, with heavy support from the strings.
• The marchwhen the fast section begins, clarinet and bassoon bring out a new, swaying theme that moves between dance and march and grows larger.
• The songthe strings sing a warm, broad melody, but in the end the movement sinks low and dark and fades away.

When it was written

It was his first symphony in eleven years, since the Fourth. At the time Tchaikovsky feared he could no longer write good music, and while composing he wrote in a letter that he wanted to prove to himself he had not been emptied out.

Even after the first performances he considered it a failure. But a warm reception at a performance in Hamburg the following year, it is said, changed his mind. The dark theme of the introduction returns in the last movement transformed into a bright march in the major.