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PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Suite No. 4 in G major, Op. 61, “Mozartiana” Born: Russia, May 7, 1840, in Kamsko-Votkins, Russia Died: November 6, 1893, in Saint Petersburg, Russia Work composed: 1887 First performance: December 24, 1887, in Saint Petersburg; Tchaikovsky conducting “Why do you not care for Mozart? In this respect our opinions differ, dear friend. I not only like Mozart, I idolize him. To me, the most beautiful opera ever written is Don Giovanni ... In his chamber music, Mozart charms me by his purity and distinction of style, and by his exquisite handling of different instruments ... I could go on forever about this sunny genius.” The author of this paean is Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, a composer whose Russian Romanticism seems far removed from the poised classical aesthetic that much of Mozart’s music exemplifies. Indeed, Tchaikovsky embodied the spirit of 19th-century Romanticism as much as any other musician of his generation. He was an extremely emotional personality, by turns melancholic and euphoric, passionate and deeply fatalistic, and much of his music is charged with an intense subjectivity. But despite the artistic and temperamental differences between Mozart and himself, Tchaikovsky worshiped the Austrian composer’s work fervently. Here was “the Christ of music,” Tchaikovsky declared, “the sunny genius” whose music “moves me to tears.” In 1887 Tchaikovsky paid homage to his idol by arranging four of Mozart’s works into a suite for orchestra, which he subtitled “Mozartiana.” The first of those works, composed as a piano solo in 1789, is a Gigue, a dance with a rapid three-beat pulse. Mozart endowed the music with echoic counterpoint after the manner of J. S. Bach. The ensuing Minuet orchestrates another piano piece, written in 1780. “Preghiera” (“Prayer”) is a setting of Mozart’s famous Ave Verum Corpus. Franz Liszt previously had made a elaborate and somewhat free transcribed this choral motet for piano, and Tchaikovsky used Liszt’s arrangement as the template for his own. The finale is by far the longest of the four “Mozartiana” pieces. Like the third movement, and in some degree the first, it is the work of three composers: Mozart, Tchaikovsky and, in this case, Christoph Wilibald Gluck (1714–1787). Gluck’s operas enjoyed much popularity during his lifetime, and in 1784 Mozart wrote a set of variations on an aria from Gluck’s comic opera Le recontre imprévue (The Unexpected Meeting). Tchaikovsky’s orchestration preserves, indeed enhances, the humorous tone of Mozart’s piano solo. What to Listen For The initial Gigue packs contrapuntal discourse, angular rhythms and surprising turns of line and harmony into two brimming minutes. In the third movement, Prayer, the introduction, closing chords, harp embellishments and other details are additions by Franz Liszt and Tchaikovsky, and reflect those composers’ impulse to refashion Mozart’s music in the manner of the 19th century. Among other humorous touches in the finale is the mock-formal tone of an extended solo for violin. Program Notes © 2015 Paul Schiavo