Tchaikovsky’s Deadly Symphony: Superstition or Fact?

Nearing the end of the concert, Gabrilowitsch raised his hands and the orchestra began to play Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony.  The eyes of the attentive audience were focused on the maestro’s expressive hands limned in the spotlight.  They seemed to flow toward each instrument, beseeching and cajoling it to give its best. 

As the Pathetique movement began, Gabrilowitsch himself seemed to be transmuted into a sensitive medium pouring forth all the anguish which human beings have accumulated since the dawn of time.  Perhaps the thoughts of Gabrilowitsch were entirely upon the music.  Perhaps he had a premonition of impending doom.  No man will ever know.  The Pathetique was his swan song, just as it had been that of its composer forty-two years before.

He died quite suddenly the next morning after his greatest triumph.  And shortly thereafter, Ray Schmidt, a clarinet player in his orchestra, unexpectedly died, too. 

If the musical world had momentarily forgotten the ominous association of the Pathetique, the death of Gabrilowitsch proved to be a poignant reminder.  There was much discussion in the orchestra pit and rehearsal hall.  From that day on, the Pathetique has been taboo with many musicians

One was Victor Kolar, internationally known conductor who has related his own experiences thus:

“In the last twenty five-years I played the Pathetique movement exactly fifteen times.  Each of these times someone, usually a close friend, died soon afterwards…It began when I was directing with the New York Symphony Orchestra under Walter Damrosch.  I noticed that the death of someone among my acquaintances followed each performance of the Pathetique. Year by year the toll mounted.”

Once in Chicago, against his better judgment he was persuaded to conduct the Pathetique.

“I had directed the orchestra twice daily for four and a half weeks without repeating a composition,” he explained.  “We had about exhausted the available symphonic literature and were trying to decide what to play at the next performance.  Murray G. Patterson, manager of the orchestra, suggested the Tchaikovsky Sixth. I shook my head…”

He was eventually convinced to do the performance with Patterson saying that it was just a crazy superstition. Patterson wanted to prove that nothing bad will come out of it.

After the performance Kolar returned to his hotel and went to bed, tossing restlessly for hours before sleep came.  He awoke the next morning feeling strangely depressed.  A knock at the door followed later.  One of the musicians came to tell him that a mutual friend had fallen or jumped from a hotel room during the night and crashed to his death on the pavement. 

With this experience, Toscanini quoted “Music is a language of the emotions as words are the language of the intellect.  Both have the power either to soothe or excite and perhaps to reverse the most important of all human instincts, that of self preservation.”