Are our lives given over to the vagaries of pure chance, or are dark powers making their way in secret towards a final disaster for which our actions are unwittingly laying the groundwork? “Look at the folds in this fabric. Press them together. Now, if you run a pin through them, then withdraw the pin (…), do you think a simpleton would believe that those spaced-out holes were all made at the same time by the one pin?” * Destiny is indeed at work in this fateful programme, albeit with varying degrees of secrecy! It is more blatant in Verdi’s La Forza del destino, to the point that the mere mention of the opera's name is purported to bring bad luck in Italy, and it can only be referred to in theatres by circumlocution: The Power of Fate or The Power of Fatality… The dramatic power of its overture, with its marked contrasts and brutal contradistinctions of major and minor grips the listener by the throat with unstoppable force. In the case of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, it is far more covert. But where is Destiny hiding in the calm sentiment of solitude and communion with nature that radiates from Sibelius’s Violin Concerto? It can be found in the mysterious and inexplicable frenzy that took hold of the composer by his own admission as he worked on his score. For him, it was as if some superior power had suddenly taken possession of him and taken him under its wing…
*Extract from Jean Cocteau’s The Infernal Machine
