Mozart was Tchaikovsky’s favorite composer, someone he described as “a musical Christ,” and the Mozart work that most fired his enthusiasm was Don Giovanni. So the two minor-key works on this week’s Boston Symphony Orchestra program, under Swiss guest conductor Philippe Jordan, pair well. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 premiered in 1785, just two years before Don Giovanni, and you might anticipate Don Giovanni’s assault on Donna Anna in the stealthy D-minor bars of the opening Allegro. Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, his final completed work, is even darker. On Thursday Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki gave us magisterial Mozart and the orchestra followed with a truly magnificent Pathétique.

The last performance of K.466 I heard at Symphony Hall was from Mitsuko Uchida and Andris Nelsons in 2017. For those concerts, Nelsons led a reduced ensemble of 40 that included flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, and timpani. Jordan, who’ll be leaving his post as music director of the Vienna Staatsoper at the end of the season, had 10 added strings, which gave extra warmth without overbalancing. As in his recording with Christian Zacharias and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra back in 2012, Lisiecki played Beethoven’s cadenzas in the first and third movements. 

Dark clouds form at the Allegro outset of the concerto, followed by thunder, lightning, and lashing rain. The piano, when it enters after two minutes, reflects on this emotional tempest, remorseful and yet still wistful. What follows is a conversation where the orchestra continues to flash and rumble while the soloist makes short-lived sorties into major keys. Sharp-edged winds and brass and Timothy Genis’s timpani marked the militant introduction; Lisiecki responded with firm tone, calculated weight, and a steely bass, making no apology. Forthright statements erupted into cascading passagework; a romantic sensibility was hinted at but held in check until the three-minute cadenza, where he took full advantage of the kaleidoscopic interpretative opportunities Beethoven affords. Stormy weather then subsided quickly in the coda, almost as if in embarrassment.

The B-flat-major Romanze banishes trumpets and timpani to the bench, and the piano begins solo with a theme of disarming simplicity that seems in search of lost innocence. Mozart did not give this rondo movement a tempo marking; Lisiecki, as is his custom, took it at a good clip before plunging into the agitated G-minor section. He may have Mozart’s father on his side; in a letter to Wolfgang’s pianist sister, Nannerl, Leopold writes that the tempo should be steady throughout, meaning that the beginning should not be too slow. Still, Lisiecki’s jaunty and cheerful came at the expense of chaste and sober, perhaps not the best trade-off. His G-minor section was breathless, even torrential, an explosion that had to come, after which, as in the first movement, harmony was restored.

That didn’t last. Although the Rondo: Allegro assai is a typically high-spirited Mozart finale, it begins back in D minor. Lisiecki burst out of the gate; Jordan followed with a reminder that the menace of the first movement had only been suspended. Lisiecki hared off into major keys, played hide and seek with the orchestra, teased with more dazzling passagework. Again listening into Beethovenian depths, as if Don Giovanni were to be replaced with Fidelio, his cadenza cleared the air for piano and orchestra to move into D major for the upbeat conclusion.       

The single encore, which he introduced with a sentence citing his Polish ancestry, was Chopin’s nocturne-like Prelude Opus 28 No. 15 in D-flat Major, the so-called “Raindrop.” (George Sand suggested this nickname, though it’s not clear she was right or even that No. 15 is the Prelude she meant, but the name has stuck.) Offering less raindrop and more driving rainstorm, Lisiecki turned nocturne into a bit of a nightmare. The C-sharp-minor middle section, with its tolling bell, hardly glanced at Chopin’s harmonic textures; the second time around, it sounded repetitious. Perhaps all this was build-up to the eight-note cadenza, a descending cry of pain and relief that Lisiecki strung out and underlined as a prelude to the repose at the end. His interpretation was austere and individual, if not my favorite.    

Harlow Robinson’s BSO note for the Pathétique begins, “Few symphonies in the standard repertoire have spawned more controversy, mystery, and legend than Tchaikovsky’s Sixth.” The Pathétique has certainly spawned a few misunderstandings. The name, which appears to be Tchaikovsky’s own invention, shows up in correspondence in its Russian form, Pateticheskaya, before appearing in French on the title page of the composer’s manuscript. In either language, the meaning is closer to “passionate” than “pathetic.” The “passion” had to do with the symphony’s dedicatee, Tchaikovsky’s nephew Vladimir (Bob) Davydov. This was not a relationship that society was likely to accept, which may explain the Adagio lamentoso finale.

Then there’s the notion that Tchaikovsky had a presentiment of his death and wrote his own requiem. He did die nine days after the St. Petersburg premiere, which he had conducted; the official cause of death was cholera. At the time of the premiere, he was in good health and spirits and making plans for the rest of the 1893–94 season. He described the symphony as “the best of my works” and “the best thing I ever composed or shall compose.” Rumors that Tchaikovsky took poison to avoid a scandal connected with his homosexuality are hard to credit. He never looked to run afoul of Russia’s anti-homosexual statutes, in part because he was discreet and in part because he was on good terms with Tsar Alexander and counted among his friends many influential homosexuals, not least among them the tsar’s brother Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich.  

Finally, there’s a tradition of Pathétique interpretation that embraces outsized dynamics in both directions and tempos that range from hysterically fast to lugubriously slow. Tchaikovsky was actually meticulous in marking his score, with a dynamic range from ffff to pppppp (so his ff is not as loud as you might think) and metronome indications for every section of the four movements. Adhering to those metronome marks would give timings in the range of 14:05, 7:20, 9:10, and 7:20 — plausible in the inner two movements, which have just one metronome indication each, but rather faster than seems reasonable in the outer two. All the same, the first movement’s second subject (popularized by Glenn Miller as “The Story of a Starry Night”) is meant to be lilting rather than syrupy and sentimental. The 5/4 Allegro con grazia moves right along; the Allegro molto vivace should march, not gallop. And though the finale begins Adagio lamentoso, most of it, including the final 56 bars, is marked Andante. Like Mahler after his Ninth Symphony, Tchaikovsky was ready to move on.

On Thursday, Jordan’s Pathétique, which he conducted without a score, ran approximately 19:00 for the Adagio—Allegro non troppo, 8:00 for the Allegro con grazia, 8:30 for the Allegro molto vivace, and 9:30 for the Adagio lamentoso—Andante. These timings are typical; Jordan’s interpretation was not. Richard Svoboda’s primordial opening bassoon solo was all the more effective for going at a tempo that was actually Adagio and not Largo or Grave. Jordan’s nuanced phrasing, scrupulous observation of Tchaikovsky’s fermatas, and unusual attention to the composer’s counterpoint gave shape, momentum, texture, and bracing clarity to an Allegro non troppo that was never troppo. His second theme surged at something close to Tchaikovsky’s metronome mark before William Hudgins’s poignant clarinet ushered it out. The brief development brought fire and brimstone and perhaps the composer’s fear of the hereafter as the trombones quoted the kontakion of the Orthodox Mass for the Dead (“With thy saints, O Christ, give peace to the soul of thy servant”). The recapitulation found Jordan winding down from the first theme without coming to a standstill and losing the thread. Even the coda sounded just right. Tchaikovsky’s metronome mark of 80 for this 20-bar Andante mosso feels uncomfortably fast, as if the composer were trying too hard to be stoic. Jordan, at closer to 60, maintained a steady, intractable tread right down to the final bars, where the horns hand the descending march off to the trombones and the change in timbre is magical.

The 5/4 Allegro con grazia waltzed with speed and grace, rapt but not driven. Even without changing the tempo, Jordan made the middle section chug, Genis’s insistent timpani accenting the gloom. The bright, crisp Allegro molto vivace tightroped between celebration and crucifixion, Jordan bracing but not brusque, moving with pace and weight but also creating moments of Mendelssohnian lightness before the rousing, Offenbachian finish. When the BSO last did the Pathétique in Symphony Hall, in 2018 [They also did it last summer in Tanglewood under Nelsons. review HERE], guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero attacked from this movement straight into the finale. Jordan let the audience applaud, and for once in the middle of a piece of music, applause seemed appropriate. The finale itself ebbed and flowed, adagio giving way to andante, resistance to a dignified acceptance. The tam-tam that introduces the final pages has been seen as an augur of imminent death, but Tchaikovsky marked it p, and Thursday it seemed to signal simply the symphony descending back into the depths from which it came, after a performance I have to think the composer would have approved.      

Jeffrey Gantz has been writing about music, dance, theater, art, film, and books for the past 45 years, first for the Boston Phoenix and currently for the Boston Globe.