Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky
Sinfonia n. 4 Op. 36 in fa minore

If there is one thing that has always struck me about Tchaikovsky's music, it is the constant feeling that he was unable to communicate what he wanted through his music. His symphonies are often a mixture of confused visions and themes repeated to the point of obsession, as if desperately trying to make you understand something terribly distressing. It is with one of these themes that the symphony begins: a dry theme, almost a single repeated note, but with a staggering emotional charge. This feeling of anguish and incompleteness is incredibly well rendered in the transition to the second theme: there is a hesitation, it keeps repeating the first two notes without concluding. In the end, the theme unfolds: a cadaverous waltz, gloomy like most of the symphony. The few sweet moments are tinged with melancholy, like the theme of the second movement (Tchaikovsky said that the suggestion, in this case, was the memory of youth), or explosions that quickly exhaust their momentum.

For the version, I have a CD of a certain Rozhdestvensky, whom I had never heard before, but whom I particularly adore.