Project 366 - Tchaikovsky and Nielsen Collections

Project 366 continues in 2019 with "The Classical Collectionss - A Continued journey through the Western Classical Music Repertoire". Read more here.

This month’s chapter in the Classical Collections will mainly review on the music of Peter Tchaikovsky, and the symphonies of Denmark’s Carl Nielsen.

The Tchaikovsky Symphonies

Russian music—the Russian creative mentality as a whole, in fact—functioned on the principle of stasis. Russian novels, plays and operas were written as collections of self-contained tableaux, with the plots proceeding from one set-piece to the next. Russian folk music operated along the same lines, with songs comprised as a series of self-contained melodic units repeated continually. Compared to this mindset, the precepts of sonata form probably seemed as alien as if they had arrived from the moon.

Tchaikovsky struggled with sonata form, the primary Western principle for building large-scale musical structures since the middle of the 19th century. Traditional Russian treatment of melody, harmony and structure actually worked against sonata form's modus operandi of movement, growth and development.

Sonata form also was not designed to accommodate the emotionally charged statements that Tchaikovsky wanted to make. In this, he was far from alone—it was a major preoccupation of the Romantic age, to the point that the validity of the symphony was questioned seriously and alternatives to it were actually devised. These alternatives, which included program music in general and the symphonic poem in particular, did not offer a complete solution. Instead, they left Tchaikovsky facing a paradox. He reportedly did not care for program music, to the point of reproaching himself for writing the fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet. Yet the notion of writing symphonies as purely intellectual patterns of chords, rhythms and modulations was at least equally abhorrent.

Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky attempted to adhere more closely at least to the manner of sonata form in his first three symphonies. They remain chronicles of his attempts to reconcile his training from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with the music he had heard all his life and his own innate penchant for melody. Both those factors worked against sonata form, not with it. With the Fourth Symphony, Tchaikovsky hit upon a solution he would refine in his remaining two numbered symphonies and his program symphony Manfred—one that would enable to reconcile the more personal, more dramatic and heightened emotional statements he wished to make with the classical structure of the symphony, showing, as musicologist Martin Cooper phrased it, that "his inspiration was stronger than scruple."

In 1891 and 1892 Tchaikovsky made substantial sketches for a Symphony in E-flat major, which was abandoned before the orchestration had been completed. In 1893 Tchaikovsky adapted three of the movements for piano and orchestra as the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Andante and Finale, while the remaining movement was arranged for solo piano as Scherzo-Fantasie (No. 10 of the Eighteen Pieces, Op. 72). In the 1950s the symphony was reconstructed from the manuscript sources and completed by the Soviet musicologist Semyon Bogatyrev.

Symphony No. 1, op. 13 [TH 24] "Winter Daydreams" [Guide #218]

Symphony No. 2, op. 17 [TH 25] "Little Russian" [Guide #280]

Symphony No. 3, op. 29 [TH 26] "Polish" [Guide #219]

Symphony No. 4, op. 36 [TH 27] [Guide #281]

Manfred, op. 58 [TH 28] [Guide #282]

Symphony No. 5, op. 68 [TH 29] [Guide #282]

Symphony No. 6, op. 74 [TH 30] "Pathétique" [Guide #282]

Symphony in E-flat major [TH 238] [Guide #108]

Listener Guide # 280 - Karajan Conducts Tchaikovsky

Karajan was unquestionably a great Tchaikovsky conductor. Yet although he recorded the last three symphonies many times, he did not turn to the first three until the end of the 1970s, and then proved an outstanding advocate. Notice, at the opening of the Little Russian symphony, horn and bassoon capture that special Russian colouring, as they do in the engaging Andantino marziale, and the crisp articulation in the first-movement Allegro is bracing. The sheer refinement of the orchestral playing in the scherzo is a delight, and the finale has great zest with splendid bite and precision in the fugato passages and a convincing closing peroration. (ITYWLTMT #305 – 8 March 2019)

Listener Guide # 281-282 - Guido Cantelli - Tchaikovsky: The Last Three Symphonies

Guido Cantelli had a stellar but brief career as a conductor, championed by Toscanini who had begun looking for a younger associate to keep the NBC Symphony Orchestra (created for him in 1938) on course during his absences. He arranged for the young conductor's immediate NBC debut on January 15, 1949. Afterwards, Time magazine featured a profile likening him physically to Frank Sinatra, but musically to Arturo Toscanini. Until NBC disbanded the orchestra in 1954, Cantelli conducted there annually, beginning with four but expanding to eight programs. (Once Upon the Internet #21 – 17 December 2013)

[L/G 281: Sympho0ny #4, L/G 282: Symphonies #5 & 6]

The Tchaikovsky Orchestral Suites

Principally composed between the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, the four symphonic suites feature a blend of academic movements and fanciful, dance-like ones not far removed from the composer's ballets. In fact, all three ballets have their own orchestral suites of memorable selections from their scores. Of the three listed below, only that from The Nutcracker had the composer’s full blessing.

Suite No. 1, op. 43 [TH 31] [Guide #224]

Suite No. 2, op. 53 [TH 32] “Suite caractéristique“ [Guide #283]

Suite No. 3, op. 55 [TH 33] [Guide #78]

Suite No. 4, op. 61 [TH 34] “Mozartiana” [Guide #78]

The Nutcracker, Suite from the ballet, op. 71a [TH 35] [Guide #280]

Swan Lake, Suite from the ballet, op. 20a [TH 219] [Guide#56]

The Sleeping Beauty, Suite from the ballet, op. 66a [TH 234] [Guide #56]

Listener Guide # 283 - In Memoriam - Sir Neville Marriner (1924 – 2016)

Sir Neville studied at the Royal College of Music and the Paris Conservatoire. He began his career as a violinist, playing first in a string quartet and trio, then in the London Symphony Orchestra. It was during this period that he founded the Academy of Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields, with the aim of forming a top-class chamber ensemble from London’s finest players. The Academy now enjoys one of the largest discographies of any chamber orchestra worldwide, and its partnership with Sir Neville Marriner is the most recorded of any orchestra and conductor. (ITYWLTMT #243 – 24 March 2017)

Tchaikovsky’s Principal Concertante Works

To complete this quick survey of Tchaikovsky’s orchestral works we must invariably turn to his concertos and orher works for solo instrument and orchestra. Prominently featured are his First Piano concerto and his Violin Concerto, but we also note many short works for cello and orchestra (including the Rococo variations), a concert fantasy that is as expansive as its piano concerto cousins and a pair of short works for violin and orchestra.

Piano Concerto No. 1, op. 23 [TH 55] [Guide # 39 & 225]

Sérénade mélancolique, op. 26 [TH 56] [Guide #39]

Variations on a Rococo Theme, op. 33 (Original version) [TH 57] [Guide #284]

Variations on a Rococo Theme, op. 33 (Fitzenhagen's version:) [TH 57] [Guide #226]

Valse-Scherzo, op. 34 [TH 6-] [Guide #221]

Violin Concerto, op. 35 [TH 59] [Guide #39]

Piano Concerto No. 2, op. 44 [TH 60] [Guide #226]

Concert Fantasia, op. 56 [TH 61] [Guide #224]

Pezzo capriccioso, op. 62 [TH 62] [Guide #284]

Andante cantabile [TH 63] [Guide #284]

Nocturne [TH 64] [Guide #284]

Piano Concerto No. 3, op. 75 [TH 65] [Guide #226]

Listener Guide # 284 - Tchaikovsky: Complete works for cello and orchestra

Tchaikovsky’s complete works for cello and orchestra comprise a couple of miniatures (the Pezzo Capriccioso and Nocturne), an arrangement of the famous Andante cantabile from the First String Quartet and the evergreen Rococo Variations. (Cover 2 Cover  #18 – 23 April 2019)

The Symphonies of Carl Nielsen

Nielsen is perhaps most closely associated outside Denmark with his six symphonies, written between 1892 and 1925. The works have much in common: they are all just over 30 minutes long, brass instruments are a key component of the orchestration, and they all exhibit unusual changes in tonality, which heighten the dramatic tension.

Symphony No. 1, op. 7 [FS 16] [Guide #285]

Symphony No. 2, op. 16 [FS 29] “De fire Temperamenter“ (The Four Temperaments) [Guide #286]

Symphony No. 3, op. 27 [FS 60] “Sinfonia espansiva” [Guide#211]

Symphony No. 4, op. 29 [FS 76] “Det Uudslukkelige” (The Inextinguishable) [Guide #287]

Symphony No. 5, op. 50 [FS 97] [Guide #76]

Symphony No. 6 [FS 116] “Sinfonia semplice” [Guide #285]

Listener Guide # 285 - Nielsen - San Francisco Symphony / Herbert Blomstedt ‎– Symphonies 1 & 6

Nielsen wrote his first symphony at 27 years of age. Lyrically, Nielsen demonstrated his talents very successfully in his first symphony, and this at 27! The Sixth Symphony may be partially autobiographical; the composer had just experienced a tremendous success with his Fifth symphony, but had also suffered a series of heart attacks He was to write several more works, but in the remaining six years of his life, the atmosphere of his works began to change. (Cover 2 Cover  #13 – 13 Nov 2018)

Listener Guide # 286 - Leopold Stokowski

As a conductor, and the man who probably re-invented the concert-going experience for North-American audiences in the first quarter of the 20th century, Stokowski was a man of many passions: avant-garde and contemporary music (he personally conducted dozens of world premieres of works that are today well enshrined into the concert repertoire), baroque music (trained as an organist, Stokowski seems to have a great fondness for baroque music, though the sound is dated when viewed through the HIP prism) and concert showpieces (his many transcriptions of works of the Baroque and Romantic composers, which he programmed for his great Philadelphia Orchestra and for himself to play with the greatest ensembles in the world). (ITYWLTMT Montage #122 – 13 Sept 2013)

Listener Guide # 287 - Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Herbert Blomstedt ‎– Carl Nielsen

This guide contains selections from Blomstedt's first complete cycle of the symphonies of Carl Nielsen; another cycle was produced about 15 years later while he was Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony (See Guide #285). (Vinyl’s Revenge #38 – 22 May 2018)