San Francisco Symphony: Bychkov Conducts Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony September 7, 2012

Two close friends of the SFS, Semyon Bychkov and Pinchas Zukerman, join the Orchestra in opening the season. The gorgeous melodies of Bruch's concerto glow in the hands of the gifted Zukerman. If Tchaikovsky didn't invent Russian Romanticism, he surely perfected it. Afraid that he might be 'played out' at 48, he soon completed his awesome Fifth Symphony, a work unmatched in charting the journey from the melancholy of desperate longing to the triumph of the spirit.