Calling his Pathétique Symphony “the best thing I ever composed or shall compose,” Tchaikovsky claimed that he put his “whole soul into this work.” Listen as the music twists its way through moments of touching tenderness and overwhelming passion before arriving at a deeply introspective finale. Conductor Manfred Honeck pairs Tchaikovsky’s swan song with two 20th-century works. Schulhoff’s Five Pieces is a sublime mash-up of Czech folk, Latin American dance, American jazz, and European neoclassicism. Alexi Kenney performs Berg’s urgently expressive Violin Concerto, the composer’s last completed score and probably his most famous. It functions both as an elegy for a surrogate daughter who died too soon, and as a requiem for himself.

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