How deeply I love this work
of Tchaikovskys. How mellifluously
he taught an orchestra to sing
the song of his complicated destiny.
No one has ever schooled string players
so deeply in the language of yearning,
so completely in the inevitability of loss.
He needs no programme. He brings
ecstasy to the expression of his
tumultuous, impossible needs.
The violas and the cellos,
the basses and the muted violins.
In simple melodies and lilting rhythms
they allow his troubled complexity
a freedom that in life he could never know.