Tchaikovsky "Symphony No. 2 Little Russian" Original 1872 Version-Import Germany

Description: Tchaikovsky: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (/tʃaɪˈkɒfski/ chy-KOF-skee;[2] 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer during the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, his First Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, the Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, several symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin. Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant as there was little opportunity for a musical career in Russia at the time and no system of public music education. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865. The formal Western-oriented teaching that Tchaikovsky received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary nationalist movement embodied by the Russian composers of The Five with whom his professional relationship was mixed. Tchaikovsky's training set him on a path to reconcile what he had learned with the native musical practices to which he had been exposed from childhood. From that reconciliation, he forged a personal but unmistakably Russian style. The principles that governed melody, harmony, and other fundamentals of Russian music diverged from those that governed Western European music, which seemed to defeat the potential for using Russian music in large-scale Western composition or for forming a composite style, and it caused personal antipathies that dented Tchaikovsky's self-confidence. Russian culture exhibited a split personality, with its native and adopted elements having drifted apart increasingly since the time of Peter the Great. That resulted in uncertainty among the intelligentsia about the country's national identity, an ambiguity mirrored in Tchaikovsky's career. Despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovsky's life was punctuated by personal crises and depression. Contributory factors included his early separation from his mother for boarding school followed by his mother's early death, the death of his close friend and colleague Nikolai Rubinstein, his failed marriage with Antonina Miliukova, and the collapse of his 13-year association with the wealthy patroness Nadezhda von Meck. Tchaikovsky's homosexuality, which he kept private, has traditionally also been considered a major factor though some scholars have played down its importance. His dedication of his Sixth symphony to his nephew Vladimir "Bob" Davydov and his feelings expressed about Davydov in letters to others, especially following Davydov's suicide,[6] have been cited as evidence for a romantic love between the two. Tchaikovsky's sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, but there is an ongoing debate as to whether cholera was indeed the cause and whether the death was accidental or intentional. While his music has remained popular among audiences, critical opinions were initially mixed. Some Russians did not feel it was sufficiently representative of native musical values and expressed suspicion that Europeans accepted the music for its Western elements. In an apparent reinforcement of the latter claim, some Europeans lauded Tchaikovsky for offering music more substantive than exoticism, and said he transcended the stereotypes of Russian classical music. Others dismissed Tchaikovsky's music as deficient because it did not stringently follow Western principles. On 10 June 1859, the 19-year-old Tchaikovsky graduated as a titular counselor, a low rung on the civil service ladder. Appointed to the Ministry of Justice, he became a junior assistant within six months and a senior assistant two months after that. He remained a senior assistant for the rest of his three-year civil service career. Meanwhile, the Russian Musical Society (RMS) was founded in 1859 by the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna (a German-born aunt of Tsar Alexander II) and her protégé, pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein. Previous tsars and the aristocracy had focused almost exclusively on importing European talent. The aim of the RMS was to fulfill Alexander II's wish to foster native talent. It hosted a regular season of public concerts (previously held only during the six weeks of Lent when the Imperial Theaters were closed) and provided basic professional training in music. In 1861, Tchaikovsky attended RMS classes in music theory taught by Nikolai Zaremba at the Mikhailovsky Palace (now the Russian Museum). These classes were a precursor to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, which opened in 1862. Tchaikovsky enrolled at the Conservatory as part of its premiere class. He studied harmony and counterpoint with Zaremba and instrumentation and composition with Rubinstein. He was awarded a silver medal for his thesis, a cantata on Schiller's "Ode to Joy". The Conservatory benefited Tchaikovsky in two ways. It transformed him into a musical professional, with tools to help him thrive as a composer, and the in-depth exposure to European principles and musical forms gave him a sense that his art was not exclusively Russian or Western. This mindset became important in Tchaikovsky's reconciliation of Russian and European influences in his compositional style. He believed and attempted to show that both these aspects were "intertwined and mutually dependent". His efforts became both an inspiration and a starting point for other Russian composers to build their own individual styles. Rubinstein was impressed by Tchaikovsky's musical talent on the whole and cited him as "a composer of genius" in his autobiography. He was less pleased with the more progressive tendencies of some of Tchaikovsky's student work. Nor did he change his opinion as Tchaikovsky's reputation grew. He and Zaremba clashed with Tchaikovsky when he submitted his First Symphony for performance by the Russian Musical Society in Saint Petersburg. Rubinstein and Zaremba refused to consider the work unless substantial changes were made. Tchaikovsky complied but they still refused to perform the symphony. Tchaikovsky, distressed that he had been treated as though he were still their student, withdrew the symphony. It was given its first complete performance, minus the changes Rubinstein and Zaremba had requested, in Moscow in February 1868. Once Tchaikovsky graduated in 1865, Rubinstein's brother Nikolai offered him the post of Professor of Music Theory at the soon-to-open Moscow Conservatory. While the salary for his professorship was only 50 rubles a month, the offer itself boosted Tchaikovsky's morale and he accepted the post eagerly. He was further heartened by news of the first public performance of one of his works, his Characteristic Dances, conducted by Johann Strauss II at a concert in Pavlovsk Park on 11 September 1865 (Tchaikovsky later included this work, re-titled Dances of the Hay Maidens, in his opera The Voyevoda). From 1867 to 1878, Tchaikovsky combined his professorial duties with music criticism while continuing to compose. This activity exposed him to a range of contemporary music and afforded him the opportunity to travel abroad. In his reviews, he praised Beethoven, considered Brahms overrated and, despite his admiration, took Schumann to task for poor orchestration. He appreciated the staging of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at its inaugural performance in Bayreuth (Germany), but not the music, calling Das Rheingold "unlikely nonsense, through which, from time to time, sparkle unusually beautiful and astonishing details". A recurring theme he addressed was the poor state of Russian opera. Tchaikovsky displayed a wide stylistic and emotional range, from light salon works to grand symphonies. Some of his works, such as the Variations on a Rococo Theme, employ a "Classical" form reminiscent of 18th-century composers such as Mozart (his favorite composer). Other compositions, such as his Little Russian symphony and his opera Vakula the Smith, flirt with musical practices more akin to those of the 'Five', especially in their use of folk song. Other works, such as Tchaikovsky's last three symphonies, employ a personal musical idiom that facilitated intense emotional expression. American music critic and journalist Harold C. Schonberg wrote of Tchaikovsky's "sweet, inexhaustible, super sensuous fund of melody", a feature that has ensured his music's continued success with audiences. Tchaikovsky's complete range of melodic styles was as wide as that of his compositions. Sometimes he used Western-style melodies, sometimes original melodies written in the style of Russian folk song; sometimes he used actual folk songs. According to The New Grove, Tchaikovsky's melodic gift could also become his worst enemy in two ways. The first challenge arose from his ethnic heritage. Unlike Western themes, the melodies that Russian composers wrote tended to be self-contained: they functioned with a mindset of stasis and repetition rather than one of progress and ongoing development. On a technical level, it made modulating to a new key to introduce a contrasting second theme exceedingly difficult, as this was literally a foreign concept that did not exist in Russian music. The second way melody worked against Tchaikovsky was a challenge that he shared with the majority of Romantic-age composers. They did not write in the regular, symmetrical melodic shapes that worked well with sonata form, such as those favored by Classical composers such as Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven; rather, the themes favored by Romantics were complete and independent in themselves. This completeness hindered their use as structural elements in combination with one another. This challenge was why the Romantics "were never natural symphonists". All a composer like Tchaikovsky could do with them was to essentially repeat them, even when he modified them to generate tension, maintain interest, and satisfy listeners. Like other late Romantic composers, Tchaikovsky relied heavily on orchestration for musical effects. Tchaikovsky, however, became noted for the "sensual opulence" and "voluptuous timbrel virtuosity" of his orchestration. Like Glinka, Tchaikovsky tended toward bright primary colors and sharply delineated contrasts of texture. However, beginning with the Third Symphony, Tchaikovsky experimented with an increased range of timbres Tchaikovsky's scoring was noted and admired by some of his peers. Rimsky-Korsakov regularly referred his students at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory to it and called it "devoid of all striving after effect, [to] give a healthy, beautiful sonority". This sonority, musicologist Richard Taruskin pointed out, is essentially Germanic in effect. Tchaikovsky's expert use of having two or more instruments play a melody simultaneously (a practice called doubling) and his ear for uncanny combinations of instruments resulted in "a generalized orchestral sonority in which the individual timbres of the instruments, being thoroughly mixed, would vanish". According to Wiley, Tchaikovsky was a pioneer in several ways. "Thanks in large part to Nadezhda von Meck", Wiley writes, "he became the first full-time professional Russian composer". This, Wiley adds, allowed him the time and freedom to consolidate the Western compositional practices he had learned at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Russian folk song and other native musical elements to fulfill his own expressive goals and forge an original, deeply personal style. He made an impact in not only complete works such as the symphony but also program music and, as Wiley phrases it, "transformed Liszt's and Berlioz's achievements ... into matters of Shakespearean elevation and psychological import". Wiley and Holden both note that Tchaikovsky did all this without a native school of composition upon which to fall back. They point out that only Glinka had preceded him in combining Russian and Western practices and his teachers in Saint Petersburg had been thoroughly Germanic in their musical outlook. He was, they write, for all intents and purposes alone in his artistic quest. Maes and Taruskin write that Tchaikovsky believed that his professionalism in combining skill and high standards in his musical works separated him from his contemporaries in The Five. Maes adds that, like them, he wanted to produce music that reflected Russian national character, but which did so to the highest European standards of quality. Tchaikovsky, according to Maes, came along at a time when the nation itself was deeply divided as to what that character truly was. Like his country, Maes writes, it took him time to discover how to express his Russianness in a way that was true to himself and what he had learned. Because of his professionalism, Maes says, he worked hard at this goal and succeeded. The composer's friend, music critic Herman Laroche, wrote of The Sleeping Beauty that the score contained "an element deeper and more general than color, in the internal structure of the music, above all in the foundation of the element of melody. This basic element is undoubtedly Russian".Tchaikovsky was inspired to reach beyond Russia with his music, according to Maes and Taruskin. His exposure to Western music, they write, encouraged him to think it belonged to not just Russia but also the world at large. Volkov adds that this mindset made him think seriously about Russia's place in European musical culture—the first Russian composer to do so. It steeled him to become the first Russian composer to acquaint foreign audiences personally with his own works, Warrack writes, as well as those of other Russian composers. In his biography of Tchaikovsky, Anthony Holden recalls the dearth of Russian classical music before Tchaikovsky's birth, then places the composer's achievements into historical perspective: "Twenty years after Tchaikovsky's death, in 1913, Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring erupted onto the musical scene, signaling Russia's arrival into 20th-century music. Between these two very different worlds, Tchaikovsky's music became the sole bridge". Tchaikovsky* - The London Symphony Orchestra*, Geoffrey Simon – Symphony No.2, "Little Russian" (Original 1872 Version) Label:Chandos – CHAN 8304Format:CD, AlbumCountry:UKReleased:1983Genre:ClassicalStyle:Track list:Symphony No. 2 In C Minor ("Little Russian"), Op. 171I - Andante Sostenuto Allegro Comodo - Andante Sostenuto15:372II - Andante Marziale, Quasi Moderato6:323III - Scherzo And Trio: Allegro Molto Vivace4:124IV - Finale: Moderato Assai - Allegro Vivo - Presto12:35Companies, etc.Phonographic Copyright ℗ – Chandos Records LtdCopyright © – Chandos Records LtdRecorded At – Church Of St. Jude-on-the-Hill, HampsteadMade By – PolyGramCreditsComposed By – Pyotr Ilyich TchaikovskyConductor – Geoffrey SimonDesign [Sleeve] – Clare OsbornEngineer [Sound] – Ralph CouzensOrchestra – The London Symphony Orchestra*Producer – Brian CouzensNotes℗ 1982 Chandos Records Ltd. © 1982 Chandos Records Ltd. World première recording at the Church of St. Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead, London on August 3 & 5, 1982 Disc - Made in West Germany By Polygram Inserts - Printed in West Germany Title as described below: Spine - Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 2 Cover - Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 2, "Little Russian" Disc - Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2 In C-Minor, Op. 17, "Little Russian" - Original 1872 VersionBarcode and Other IdentifiersBarcode: noneMatrix / Runout: CHAN 8304 2893 202 01Other: ABRD 1071Other: Public Domain

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