Interesting that if to leave aside the “tragic” context of the Tchaikovsky’s Six then I would say that I like the Tchaikovsky’s Fifth more  then any other his symphonies. Sure it too much Slavic but it was kind of first Tchaikovsky’s “real” symphony. The Forth was kind of ingénues interpretation of Beethoven, socked into the “Swan Lake”. The First and the third movements of the Forth symphony are phenomenal but the last movement is the pure and from my perspective completely unreasonable musical abracadabra, though quite complex abracadabra. The Fifth symphonies is much more reasonable, connected, justifiable, much more musical; it is purely the action of naked honesty. Tchaikovsky in the Fifth exploited the areas of own candidness that he never touched before only now he did it with very different level maturity and realization of the “program”.  The Tchaikovsky’s Fifth deserved to be heard again and again …

Rgs,
Romy the Cat