The Fourth Symphony by Piotr Tchaikovsky is Sandy Burnett's subject in this episode of Great Moments in Classical Music. An astonishingly dramatic work written in the composer's late thirties, it's also one of those works which it's difficult to disassociate from the personal life of the composer, a man who was still reeling from the disaster of a short-lived marriage to someone entirely unsuitable. But Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony is also a gripping work on the purely musical level too; at a time when Austrian and German music reigned supreme right across Europe, Tchaikovsky was injecting the symphonic form with something essentially Russian, with unforgettable melodies and dazzling orchestral colour.
