Bernstein conducts Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4

Leonard Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic in this performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, filmed live at Avery Fisher Hall in April 1975. First performed in Moscow on 10 February 1878, Tchaikovsky’s Fourth was written at a time of great emotional torment in the composer’s life. It is dominated by a “Fate” theme, which opens the work and bursts into the music in three of the four movements. The Fourth was a piece that Bernstein returned to again and again throughout his career, not least when he conducted it in 1989 in his last appearance at Avery Fisher Hall in an interpretation that critics called “rivetingly, definitively manic-depressive.”

Ensemble: 

New York Philharmonic

Conductor: 

Leonard Bernstein