‘La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra’

Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem Don Quixote takes the audience on a journey of orchestral variations that relate the knight errant’s adventures, a romantic allegory of the composer himself. In contrast to this programmatic precision, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor is shrouded in mystery. On the night of its premiere, when the composer was asked whether his new symphony explored a particular theme, he agreed, but revealed nothing more. Nine days later, Tchaikovsky suddenly died. Since then, the work has been the object of much speculation: a testament, a love letter, a suicide note … What remains is a deeply moving symphony that is among the most popular in the repertoire.