From the Sydney Morning Herald

Sydney Symphony
By Peter McCallum
August 15, 2003

Concert Hall, Opera House, August 13

It was a wicked joke that got slightly out of hand. In the early movements, conductor Alexander Lazarev lampooned the applause between movements of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6, the Pathetique, encouraging the players with mock applause of his own.

But in a popular program with many new concertgoers, his sense of humour wasn't quite understood. At the extrovert close of the third movement, the ovation was so enthusiastic that the bemused orchestra was raised to its feet for a bow.

But rather than creating an embarrassed silence for Tchaikovsky's tragic finale, the cheers swelled, the bravos grew, some took their coats and ran for trains, and it looked for a moment as though Tchaikovsky's most tragic work had become his most optimistic, its hidden program, of which he spoke but which he never revealed, rewritten with a happy ending. It was like Becket with Godot appearing at the end of Act 1 and everyone going home.

At the hushed end of the work (Tchaikovsky was pleased not to have ended with a bang), Lazarev held the final silence for an uncomfortable length, as though reclaiming the lost quiet and recalling the eerie prophecy behind that finale: Tchaikovsky died suddenly eight days after the first performance after drinking unboiled water.

Notwithstanding, Lazarev's reading had his usual vividness, energy and attention to the details of the score: the carefully moulded phrases of the opening, and in the genial phrases of the second movement, the extreme hush (Tchaikovsky marks four p's) at the end of the first movement and the irrepressible exuberance in the third. For all the musicianly care, there was a slight feeling at the end - and one felt Lazarev also felt this too - that Tchaikovsky's poignant valedictory utterance had not been well served by circumstances.....