 After he strove "to crowd in as much counterpoint as possible" into his Third Symphony, he wrote chamber works adhering strictly to classical models, including a string sextet, a string quartet in F minor and a quintet for flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano.About the quartet and the symphony, Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, that they "were filled with a host of clever things but ... [were] imbued with a dryly pedantic character".Borodin commented that when he heard the symphony, he kept "feeling that this is the work of a German "Herr Professor" who has put on his glasses and is about to write "Eine grosse Symphonie in C"".