Search - Edmund White :: Tchaikovsky: Symphony no 6 / Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic (Penguin Music Classics Series)

Novelist Edmund White annotates Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 by linking it to two factors: the composer's homosexuality and the music's ballet-like motion. Remarking that he hears in this piece "the master's last testament and requiem," White does listeners a great service in rendering the music's details according to Tchaikovsky's mix of fascination with dance and music and the composer's certainly difficult position as a gay man in late-19th century Russia. Karajan's take on the music is aptly huge--leaning towards a deference to Tchaikovsky's Romantic grandness, rather than the layers of detail evident in the music. This is music that's hard to the philosophical core, leaning toward unsettled resignation but always resistant to full-on darkness of spirit. That the music is so inextricably bound to Tchaikovsky's death--which came less than a year after the Sixth's completion--is a plump historical twist when reading White's liner note, because in the aural throes of misery, White hears fast-dancing bodies and woven dances. But no good dance goes unpunished, and the dancing passion incites frenzy, and he finally shares in the historical conclusion that this "agonized work" is rife with pain and death. Without lightening the mood, it bears noting that this is wide-angle music when it comes to dynamics, depth, and tension. --Andrew Bartlett