Conductor Charles Hazlewood features prominently in four of the TV programmes, and is delighted to have had the chance to rectify what he sees as a historical distortion of Tchaikovsky's music. He deplores the way many post-Second World War conductors converted his work into a glutinous syrup – "especially Herbert von Karajan, who should have been shot for the disservice he performed" – and wants instead to "show that this is music of enormous visceral power and at times coarse brutality, as well as of almost unbearable sweetness".