On August 6 he reported progress on the new work. “I have orchestrated half the symphony,” he writes. “My age, although I am not very old, begins to tell on me. I become very tired, and I can no longer play the piano or read at night as I used to do.” Ill health troubled him during the summer months, but by August 26 he was able to announce the completion of the symphony. At first he was dissatisfied with it. Even the favorable verdict of a group of musical friends, among them Taneieff, did no good. Early performances of the symphony only strengthened Tschaikowsky’s misgivings. The work was premièred in St. Petersburg on November 17, 1888, with Tschaikowsky conducting. A second performance followed on November 24, at a concert of the Musical Society, with the composer again conducting. Then came a performance in Prague. The public was enthusiastic. The critics, on the other hand, almost unanimously attacked it as unworthy of Tschaikowsky’s powers. In a letter to Mme. von Meck in December he expressed frank disgust with the symphony: “Having played my symphony twice in Petersburg and once in Prague, I have come to the conclusion that it is a failure. There is something repellent in it, some over-exaggerated color, some insincerity of fabrication which the public instinctively recognizes. It was clear to me that the applause and ovations referred not to this but to other works of mine, and that the symphony itself will never please the public. All this causes a deep dissatisfaction with myself. “It is possible that I have, as people say, written myself out, and that nothing remains but for me to repeat and imitate myself. Yesterday evening I glanced over the Fourth Symphony, _our_ symphony. How superior to this one, how much better it is! Yes, this is a very, very sad fact.” A composer who was still to write the _Hamlet_ overture-fantasy, the _Sleeping Beauty_ and _Nutcracker_ ballets, the opera _Pique Dame_, and the _Pathetic_ symphony, was anything but “written out,” as Tschaikowsky feared! After the symphony triumphed in both Moscow and Hamburg, Tschaikowsky speedily changed his mind and wrote to his publisher Davidoff: “I like it far better now, after having held a bad opinion of it for some time.” He speaks of the Hamburg performance as “magnificent,” but expresses his old complaint about the Russian press, that it “continues to ignore me,” and bemoans the fact that “with the exception of those nearest and dearest to me, no one will ever hear of my successes.” Modeste Tschaikowsky attributed the work’s early failure in St. Petersburg (that is, with the critics) to his brother’s poor conducting.