Two markedly different women bookend the story of the Tchaikovsky Fourth. Wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck became Tchaikovsky’s patron in 1876, not long after he had begun work on the symphony. Her financial contributions stabilized Pyotr’s typically threadbare finances, while her sympathetic correspondence provided a valuable outlet for the often-troubled composer.

The next year, former student Antonina Ivanovna Milyukova was doomed to suffer through a brief and disastrous marriage with Tchaikovsky that ended with her homosexual husband fleeing in panic. It was during the emotional wreckage of the (unconsummated) marriage’s aftermath that Tchaikovsky put the finishing touches on the Fourth. Precisely how that mental turmoil ultimately shaped the symphony remains a matter of conjecture, but clearly the Fourth represents a watershed in Tchaikovsky’s symphonic evolution, as he brought the innermost secrets of his psyche to a genre traditionally associated with the logical development of musical ideas within established structural principles.

This companion concert recording for Keeping Score: MTT on Music, as seen on PBS, was recorded live in Davies Symphony Hall in May 2002.