I hear that Toscanini has played “Pathétique” replacing the fourth
movement with the third movement to achieve a performance effect.
I cannot believe that ludicrous story ! Is it true or not ?
Kenji Sugiyama
Japan
Dear Kenji Sugiyama,
I never heard about Toscanini conducting Tchaikovsky's symphony in such
a peculiar order, but when the German conductor Oscar Fried visited
Bolshevik Russia in 1922, he decided to perform the Sixth Symphony with
the Allegro molto vivace (march-scherzo) movement transposed to the end of
the symphony, following the Adagio lamentoso. The performance was greeted
by a rousing ovation, but in a speech on that occasion Anatoly
Lunacharsky, while recognizing that Tchaikovsky's music was perhaps "very
attractive", he nevertheless called it "poisonous". Only music in a major
key, declared the People Commissar, could correspond to Bolshevik
ideology, whereas music in a minor key was, by its very nature, Menshevik.
Alexander Poznansky