Release Date: 12 January 1999
Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 0730099572828
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: Tchaikovsky Suites For Orch
Description
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893)Suite No.3 in G Major, Op. 55 Suite No.4 in G Major ("Mozartiana"), Op. 61Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky belonged to the first generation ofRussian composers to have the undoubted advantage of professional musical training at theConservatory in St. Petersburg, newly established by Anton Rubinstein, under the patronageof the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna. Abandoning the career intended for him, as anofficial in the Ministry of Justice, he turned to music, and followed his studies withemployment on the staff of the new Moscow Conservatory, directed by Nikolai Rubinstein,brother of the founder of the institution in St. Petersburg. Diffident in character, andsubject to acute nervous depression, he suffered considerably from an unfortunatemarriage, contracted in 1877 in an ingenuous attempt to conceal his own homosexualinclinations, a match followed by immediate separation and divorce. For some years Tchaikovsky enjoyed the moral and financialsupport of a rich widow, Nadezhda von Meck. a woman he was never to meet, although hestayed at her estate in Brailov during her absence. Her help allowed him to withdraw fromthe drudgery of teaching at the Moscow Conservatory and to devote himself to composition.With her he continued to exchange letters which reveal something of the thoughts andfeelings behind the music he was writing.It has been suggested that Tchaikovsky's death, in 1893, wassuicide, forced upon him by a court of honour of former students of the School ofJurisprudence to avoid a threatened scandal, resulting from a liaison with the son of anobleman. Whatever the truth of this, the official cause of death, announced as cholera,enabled his passing to be mourned as it should have been, his achievement in Russian musichaving become increasingly apparent at home and abroad. Tchaikovsky might have appeared toVienna critics such as Eduard Hanslick as irredeemably Russian. At home, however, he worea much more cosmopolitan air than the group of avowedly nationalist composers with theirself-appointed leaders Balakirev and Cesar Cui, declared enemies of the Rubinsteins andthe "German" training offered by the Conservatories.In the early summer of 1884 Tchaikovsky was staying at Kamenka,the estate of his brother-in-law Lev Davidov. He had already achieved much, and yet, inhis habitual manner, he was again questioning his own powers as a composer, fearing thathe had nothing left to say. Entries in his diary in May express these anxieties, as hestruggled with the composition of the third of his orchestral suites. In fact the work,particularly in its final set of variations, was to prove one of his most effective. Onits first performance, which took place in St. Petersburg in January 1885, it was aninstant success.The Elegie, which forms the first movement, replacedTchaikovsky's original conception, Contrastes, something that he had found intractable anddetestably commonplace. The movement combines subtle colouring of orchestra
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Z Tylsar
Zagreb F
Worceste
