MUSIC / Underrated: Hard as nails: the case for Tchaikovsky

Now that Elgar has been widely divested of 'jingoism', Vaughan Williams of 'pastoralism' and Mahler of 'plagiarism', isn't it about time we challenged the cliche of Tchaikovsky's 'emotionalism'?

Ever the victim of his melodic gift, Peter Ilich is like a hapless pin-up hoisted by his own seductive petard, an accessible figure whose buried soul is as profound as the Austro-German masters with whom he is unfavourably compared. Yet the evidence in his defence is overwhelming.

Take, for example, the massive first movement of the Fourth Symphony, as ingenious and watertight a structure as exists in the Romantic repertory, with a symmetrical placement of subjects and a tight central development. Emotional desperation is an ingredient, but only as part of the overall design: the brush-strokes remain secure, the motives artfully calculated and the result vulnerable only when interpreters inflame its melodic lines.

'Still waters run deep,' says the old, misleading adage, while its converse implication - that raging torrents lack depth - is almost as pervasive. Yet Tchaikovsky's deployment of his material was deeply meaningful, while his inventiveness is often unappreciated. One wonders if the first three Orchestral Suites would have achieved greater acclaim had their 'tunes' been sweeter; and yet try the Second, with its disorientating, stream-of-consciousness 'Reves d'enfant'.

Then there are the Second and Third String Quartets: big pieces both, and full of ideas. You might then cite the influence exerted by Brahms, Wagner and Debussy on later composers, but think how Tchaikovsky's E minor Symphony (the Fifth) prompted Rachmaninov's E minor (the Second), and if you cast a shrewd ear forward to Elgar's Second Symphony (in E flat), consider the eloquent oboe in the slow movement and then recall the parallel passage in Tchaikovsky's Andante cantabile.

But the most profound acts of homage were paid by a composer whose temperament and style suggest a world that Tchaikovsky could have only imagined: his name, Igor Stravinsky. Apart from the ballet The Fairy's Kiss - based on Tchaikovsky's music - there's the tragic and undemonstrative Symphony in C, a work where tension and control are key words. But come the first movement's central eruption, texture and harmonisation suddenly pull Tchaikovsky into view - the real Tchaikovsky. Naked, profound and no less devastating without his tunes.