The audience for a Sydney Symphony concert was clapping between every movement of a Tchaikovsky symphony. As a joke, the conductor also began applauding, then bade the orchestra rise for a bow. “But rather than creating an embarrassed silence for Tchaikovsky’s tragic finale, the cheers swelled, the bravos grew, some took their coats and ran for trains, and it looked for a moment as though Tchaikovsky’s most tragic work had become his most optimistic, its hidden program, of which he spoke but which he never revealed, rewritten with a happy ending…”