Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6, 'Pathetique' | Alan Gilbert

Tchaikovsky's last symphony is not exactly a classical symphony in the usual sense of the word "classical". Let us look at its first and most important movement where one expects to hear something that is more or less in sonata form. The exposition contains, of course, two main themes, the second (and most beautiful) of which, however, is totally absent from the development section - and even from the recapitulation! It is only heard as a kind of coda at the end of the movement.

The second movement is in ABA form, the tone of the middle section foretelling the tragic tone of the finale (fourth movement) of the symphony. Finally, the energetic third movement is a standard Scherzo (albeit not in 3/4).

We note that Gustav Mahler has been quite unjust in his criticism for the symphony, calling it "shallow, superficial, distressingly homophonic - no better than salon music"! According to Deryck Cooke, Mahler attempted to "correct" the shortcomings of the "Pathetique" in his own "Ninth", which owes much to Tchaikovsky's "Sixth"...

J. B. Priestley: "An Inspector Calls"

An Inspector Calls is a modern morality play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in the Soviet Union in 1945 and at the "New Theatre" in London the following year. It is one of Priestley's best-known works for the stage and is considered to be one of the classics of mid-20th century English theater. The play is a three-act drama which takes place on a single night on 5 April 1912. The play focuses on the prosperous upper middle-class Birling family, who live in a comfortable home in the fictional town of Brumley. The family is visited by a man calling himself "Inspector Goole", who questions the family about the suicide of a young working-class woman in her mid-twenties. Long considered part of the repertory of classic drawing-room theater, the play has also been hailed as a scathing criticism of the hypocrisies of Victorian and Edwardian English society and as an expression of Priestley's socialist political principles. (From Wikipedia)

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde - Prelude and Liebestod | Jaap van Zweden