Vini Reilly explains in this extract from the July 2004 issue of Mojo magazine how Tchaikovsky's heart-rending Symphony Pathétique sustains him: "I used to have to go to bed really early when I was a child, and I would put my ear to the bedroom floor so I could hear the music my dad was playing downstairs. My dad would never play rock and pop, always jazz or classical, and when I did first hear the Beatles at a friend's house I didn't get it for a long time".

"The Symphony Pathétique was one of the pieces that would drift up through the floor. I never realised what it was until after his death when I went to see the film, The Music Lovers [Ken Russell's 1971 life of Tchaikovsky] with my sister and uses it. For me it's the last movement that I specifically love. What's interesting is that it is not particularly clever. The counterpoint isn't fantastic, it's not technically brilliant by his standards, in fact it's kind of clumsy. Mut the more I listen to it the more heartbreaking it seems, the more impact it has. It is the most tragic piece, literally and uncontrollable outpour of absolute despair".

Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74 'Pathétique'
Recorded in Berlin
Premiered 28 October 1893

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