Francesca da Rimini in E minor, Op. 32 "Symphonic fantasy"

The piece unfolds as one continuous span, but it falls into three clear stages that trace Dante's story. It opens with low brass and woodwinds intoning a grim, chant-like theme, meant to suggest the gates of Hell and the words "abandon hope, all ye who enter here." This darkens into a churning orchestral storm, strings racing in swirling scales, brass snarling, depicting the eternal whirlwind that punishes Francesca and her lover Paolo for their adultery. The storm suddenly drops away, and a solo clarinet sings a long, yearning melody, the love theme, which is passed to the strings and swells into the emotional high point of the work. This is the moment first-time listeners remember: a full-orchestra climax built entirely from that one tune. After the melody fades, the opening chant returns, and the whirlwind music comes back with even greater force, hurling the piece to a crashing, unresolved close. Listen for the contrast between the two extremes, the churning violence of the storm and the stillness of the love theme, since Tchaikovsky builds the entire fifteen minutes from just these two ideas.

Tchaikovsky wrote Francesca da Rimini in 1876, drawing on a story from Dante's Inferno about Francesca da Rimini and Paolo, two lovers condemned to Hell's eternal storm for their affair. He had recently traveled to Bayreuth for the premiere of Wagner's Ring cycle, and the tone poem shows Tchaikovsky working in the same vein of vivid orchestral storytelling. The piece was premiered in Moscow in 1877 under Nikolai Rubinstein. It quickly became one of Tchaikovsky's most frequently performed orchestral works outside his symphonies and ballets, valued by orchestras for its dramatic contrasts and its showcase of full orchestral color, from thundering brass and strings to the extended solo clarinet melody at its center.