Spotlight Tchaikovsky: The “Pathétique” symphony

It was really a premiere for Karajan. His first-ever recording with the Berlin Philharmonic and his first ever recording of a symphony.

On 23 June 1939, the 31-year-old maestro recorded Tchaikovsky’s sixth symphony, the famous “Pathétique”, “in those days […] not only a technically demanding but also an oversized work for a recording, requiring a whole stack of shellacs. (Franz Endler)” Karajan had had the work in his repertoire since his Ulm days. Although the orchestra there was only intended to play opera, he managed to organize concerts on an improvised stage. On 22 February 1933, he conducted the “Pathétique” for the first time and had an overwhelming success. He wrote to his parents: “When it was over, the audience sat as if dead for ten seconds; then they bawled their approval as if at a football match.” In his Aachen years, the popular symphony was also on the programme for his third-ever concert with the Berlin Philharmonic ten weeks before the recording. It was another “Das Wunder Karajan” sensation among his Berlin appearances in the late 1930s. Due to the war and the rare concert opportunities for Karajan, he didn’t conduct the “Pathétique” very often for almost ten years. Richard Osborne mentions a concert with the Orchestra of Trieste’s Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi in the days immediately after the truce, when Karajan was still in Italy. In 1948, he recorded it with the Vienna Philharmonic and performed it with the Vienna Symphony within a few weeks. From then on, the symphony was never out of Karajan’s repertoire. More than that, “The last three Tchaikovsky symphonies are next to Beethoven, Brahms and Strauss the works Karajan recorded most often (Peter Uehling)”. He performed the “Pathétique” in concert not only with all his orchestras (Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Philharmonia) but also with the RAI Torino, the NHK in Japan and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra – 64 times altogether.

It is remarkable that Karajan’s interpretation of the “Pathétique” made extremely different impressions on its listeners. As a child, Karajan’s daughter Arabel was worried about her father’s health when she heard it. In summer 1983, when she was already a young adult she told Roger Vaughn:

“I remember one of my first concerts, it was in Berlin, Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’. Suddenly I was so afraid. It was so intense – he was so intense up there. I thought that the music could kill him. Every time I hear that piece I shiver.”

Six months later, in January 1984, Richard Osborne witnessed a rehearsal for it in Vienna which seemed like a peaceful idyll:
“I recall him rehearsing the Vienna Philharmonic in two works by Tchaikovsky, the Sixth Symphony and the Fantasy Overture Romeo and Juliet. It was late afternoon, the microphones had been taken away, the hall was only half lit. Karajan sat with the orchestra in something closer to a seance or seminar than a rehearsal. Occasionally, he would break the spell with a droll reminiscence, but for the most part he worked patiently and quietly on the symphony, taking scrupulous care over the ostinato rhythms in the opening paragraphs and the gradations into and out of silence which Tchaikovsky’s writing so dauntingly requires.”
Peter Uehling, who described the recording twenty years afterwards, is more or less perturbed:
“The last version with the Vienna Philharmonic, recorded in 1984 during the Berlin crisis, is so powerful in its extreme sound balance that it is beyond the distinctions of taste. The development starts with a bang, the double-basses and cellos strain their C strings so heavily that it is threatening. The big outbursts are so strong that the technical realisation of the interpretation almost loses control of any transparence. The music turns into desperate noise. In the last movement, with the cumulation before the last reprise of the lamentoso, Karajan achieves an atmosphere of exasperation and forlornness that is really frightening.”

Karajan conducted the “Pathétique” for the last time on his Japan tour with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1988.
Ten years after the maestro’s death, Valery Gergiev performed it at a Karajan memorial concert with the Vienna Philharmonic.

—  P.R. Jenkins