BBCNOW/Hempel/Hough – review

St David's Hall, CardiffByron called his poem Manfred a metaphysical drama, but when Tchaikovsky used the story of self-imposed exile as the basis of his programmatic symphony, the parallels with his own personal torment, his homosexuality, must have been painful. In performance, the score's mix of existential angst and Alpine escapism tends to produce a similarly mixed response: Toscanini thought it Tchaikovsky's greatest music; Leonard Bernstein rubbished it.Conducting the BBC National Orchest...

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