Tchaikovsky: Manfred, Symphonie en quatre tableaux, Op. 58 - I. Lento lugubre | OSI & M. Poschner

Manfred, Symphonie en quatre tableaux d'après le poème dramatique de Byron, Op. 58

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Manfred, Symphonie en quatre tableaux d'après le poème dramatique de Byron, Op. 58
I. Lento lugubre

Orchestra della Svizzera italiana (OSI)
Markus Poschner, conductor

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony

A less suitable suggestion probably could not have been made by Mily Balakirev to his fellow composer Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky when in 1882 he sent him the programme for a four-movement symphony in the style of Hector Berlioz, based on Lord Byron’s ‘metaphysical’ drama Manfred, set in the Bernese Alps.

Tchaikovsky was suspicious of both the play as well as its author. Shortly after the premiere of Manfred on 11 March 1886 he wrote to Boris Jurgenson, the son of his publisher: «At your age as well as later, I could find no liking for Byron. He simply seemed to me unbearably boring. Much later I began to understand his strength, and yet many of his works […] still drive me to desolation». And he also felt a ‘hopeless coldness’ towards the programme, as he confessed to Balakirev at the outset. This coldness was partly due to the high regard Tchaikovsky had for Robert Schumann’s Manfred, op. 115 (1852) and – despite the huge success he had with orchestral programme music such as Romeo and Juliet (1870: no opus number), The Tempest, op. 18 (1873), Francesca da Rimini, op. 32 (1877) and the 1812 Overture, Op. 49 (1882) – he held a secret aversion to the genre: «It is a thousand times more pleasant to write without any programme! When I am composing a programme symphony, I feel like a charlatan swindling the public; I’m not paying them real money but worthless notes», he confessed to his former student Sergei Taneyev on 13 June 1885. However, because of his personal bond with Balakirev, he consented to compose the work.

At the centre of Byron’s drama stands the misanthropic nobleman Manfred, who is plagued throughout his life by guilt: for having practised black magic, for invoking spirits as well as for harbouring an incestuous love for his sister Astarte, who took her life as a result. Tired of existence, he himself now longs to die or at least to descend into madness, and yet the spirits he has summoned up refuse the fulfilment of his wish for ‘forgetfulness’, and a chamois hunter, rushing onto the scene, foils his suicide attempt on the Jungfrau mountain. A witch of the Alps promises help if he submits himself to her will but he haughtily declines. Like Orpheus, Manfred descends into the Underworld, from whose ruler Arimanes he demands his sister. When she appears, she does not forgive her brother but instead foretells his own imminent death. [..]

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Release date: 16.01.2026
Album N°: DO 3140/41
EAN: 7619931314020
ISRC: CH1262514001
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