Christian Thielemann on passion and nobility in Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony (13 min.)

Whether he is performing Wagner in Bayreuth or Bruckner with the world’s major orchestras, Christian Thielemann’s interpretations of late German Romanticism always receive high praise from the critics. It was all the more exciting when, in March 2012, he conducted a work which illuminates this era from a Russian perspective, Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s stirring Sixth Symphony, the “Pathétique”. The programme also included Claude Debussy’s Nocturnes and excerpts from Olivier Messiaen’s song cycle Poems pour Mi. Aleksandar Ivić, violinist with the Berliner Philharmoniker, talked to Christian Thielemann about the works of the evening.