Destiny’s shadow hangs powerfully over Tchaikovsky’s last symphony: nine days after he conducted its premiere in St Petersburg, the composer was dead. He was 53 years old.

His doctors blamed his mysterious death on cholera, contracted from drinking unboiled water. But whether he drank that glass deliberately remains the subject of intense debate.

Odyssey explores Tchaikovsky’s psychology through the last two big orchestral works he completed. One, a light-hearted piece of brilliant balletic fantasy, the other this melancholic symphony, which he described as being “saturated with myself” and the best thing he would ever write.

Its subtitle and the slow final movement that dies away to nothing shocked its first audiences. Some saw it as thinly veiled suicide note. But was it?

Using narration drawn from contemporaries, the concert will examine the unsolved mystery of the composer’s unexpected death and pose the question, was it an accident or suicide?