PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique” (1893)
Tchaikovsky completed his powerful final work and conducted its premiere just nine days before his death (blamed at the time on a glass of unboiled water during Russia’s cholera epidemic, but more recently thought to have been a suicide). Though this time frame provides a plausible interpretation of the Sixth Symphony as a farewell to the world, it is shrouded in dolorous mystery. Tchaikovsky wrote: “The program will be left as an enigma—let people guess it for themselves. [It] is so intensely personal that as I was mentally composing it I frequently wept copiously.” The nickname “Pathétique” (meaning “emotional,” not “pathetic”) was suggested by Tchaikovsky’s brother Modest, and his publisher—keeping in mind the marketing possibilities of such a title—insisted on using it, even though the composer himself had rejected it. According to Walter Damrosch, Tchaikovsky demurred when asked about the “program” of the Sixth and added, “We parted with the expectation of meeting again, but, alas, in October came the cable announcing [Tchaikovsky’s] death from cholera, and a few days later arrived a package from Moscow containing the score and parts for the ‘Pathétique.’ It was like a message from the dead.” The music begins in the depths of the bassoon register—dark, gloomy, and melancholy; much tumult and anguish follow, but also a waltz with an unusual 5/4, rather than 3/4 rhythm. Resist the urge to applaud after the triumphant ending of the third movement. The finale, Adagio lamentoso, is yet to come, with the real ending announced by a foreboding stroke of the tam-tam, and then sinking into gloomy silence—a shattering final utterance. Some 60,000 people applied to attend Tchaikovsky’s funeral, but even the huge Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg could hold no more than 8,000 mourners. One of them was 11-year old Igor Stravinsky.

LUDOVIC MORLOT, conductor, born in 1974 in Lyon, France
Beginning with the headline “‘Prince’ Morlot Rocked,” the Chicago Tribune raved about the “upwardly mobile young French conductor,” continuing: “If Ludovic Morlot isn’t careful, he will forever be stuck with the label ‘prince of the substitute conductors.’” The youthful maestro had just stepped in for Riccardo Muti at the Chicago Symphony in a program that included Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. Philharmonic audiences made his acquaintance when he replaced Christoph von Dohnányi on short notice. The New York Times raved: “If he was nervous on this milestone night, you would not have known it. He conducted the entire program with fluid yet unostentatious technique, palpable confidence and appealing energy.” That same month he replaced Yuri Temirkanov in Baltimore. It seems that if there’s a go-to conductor these days it must be Ludovic Morlot. Substituting for an ailing maestro “is something you hope for, but I don’t want to make a habit of it.” Highlights of the 2009-10 season in North America include return engagements with the Chicago Symphony and Boston Symphony and debuts with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, National Symphony (Washington D.C.), and the symphony orchestras of Cincinnati and Atlanta. Born in Lyon, he studied violin in his native France and later in Montreal, and took up conducting in 1994. He earned his master’s degree in conducting from the Royal Academy of London, where he studied with Sir Colin Davis. Having won the Seiji Ozawa Fellowship, he made his Tanglewood debut in 2001, and in 2004 James Levine selected him as one of two assistant conductors at the Boston Symphony, a job Morlot describes as an intermediate step “between student days and the big jump into the professional world.” He has also been conductor-in-residence with the Orchestra National de Lyon, France.

“The conductor’s keen ear and rhythmic sense brought much to the pieces.” The Boston Globe

“Under Maestro Morlot’s crisp direction, the NSO gave one of its most viscerally exciting performances ever, right up to the work’s hair-raising final bars.” Washington Post