Download Romeo and Juliet Marche Slave Capriccio Itahen

Romeo and Juliet
Marche Slave
Itahen
Capriccio
,
-
r$,.3-kz:.t::s
,,.t22<c,:,:y
-x.<
>-
'*'+7j+
:>;\
*&+yp<<;?i3&
*
:pS55$2?-;$.<
,
.
.
<.
"..?
b.
- -4.c 3 p 7
""
.
$
!
+
A
:,L*<,<: *"r:,'<
~~~~$!
a&,+-r.:.
--<-.;,y
,,xss~.i:
.,...>
?-.
Philharmonia Cassovia
-
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (1840 1893)
Romeo and Juliet, Fantasy Overture
1812 Overture, Op. 49
Capriccio Italien, Op. 45
Marche Slave, Op. 31
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky was born in 1840, the second son by his second
wife of a mining engineer, manager of a metal works. At home he showed
musical precocity and in 1848 he had his first experience of school in St.
Petersburg. Two years later he entered the School of Jurisprudence, where
he remained for nine years, later entering the government service. In 1863 he
resigned from his position in the Ministry of Justice and became a student at
the newly established Conservatory in St. Petersburg, following this with
appointmentto the staff of the new Conservatory in Moscow. He remained on
the staff of the Moscow Conservatory until 1878, when a pension from a rich
widow, with whom he corresponded for years but whom he never met, gave
him independence to continue a career as a composer. He died when he
seemed at the height of his powers, in 1893.
This bald account of the course of Tchaikovsky's life ignores aspects that
caused him a great deal of misery. The departure of his beloved governess
in 1848 and the death of his mother in 1854 moved him deeply, affecting a
nature that had already proved morbidly sensitive and diffident. Tchaikovsky
was well enough liked by his contemporaries at the School of Jurisprudence
and was never one to withdraw from social contact. Nevertheless, as a
musician, he was easily depressed by harsh criticism and remained intensely
critical of what he wrote.
In 1868 Tchaikovsky had written a symphonic poem Fatum and this had
elicited from Balakirev, in St. Petersburg, harsh and detailed criticism.
Balakirev was the leader of the group of nationalist composers,
Rimsky-Korsakov, Cbsar Cui, Borodin and Mussorgsky. He had taken over
the-directionof the Russian Music Society concerts in St. Petersburg after the
resignation of their founder, Anton Rubinstein in 1867. In 1869 he was
dismissed by the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, and Tchaikovsky gallantly
published an article deploring this. Tchaikovskyls defence of Balakirev and his
ready acceptance of the criticism of Fatum led to the renewal of Balakirev's
influence over him, and it was from him that the idea of writing an orchestral
work on the subject of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet came. Balakirev was
always ready to offer criticism of the music of his contemporaries, but was
equally generous with ideas.
The story of Romeo and Juliet is too well k$own to need repetition.
Tchaikovsky makes no attempt to follow the events as fhey occur in
Shakespeare's play. There is the solemnity of Friar Laurence, whose
well-intentioned intervention is the indirect cause of the tragedy, a theme
re-creatingthe traditional enmity of the houses of Montague and Capulet and
a sensuous melody. expressing the love of Romeo and Juliet. The overture is
in traditional sonata-form, the exposition, with its principal thematic material,
followed by acentral development and a final recapitulation,in which love ends
in death. The original Overture was revised in 1870, on the suggestion of
Balakirev, and underwent further revisionin 1880,when it becamean OvertureFantasy.
About the 1812 Overture Tchaikovsky was diffident, describing it, in a letter
to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck, as "without any serious merits". The
overture was written in response to an official commission from Nikolay
Rubinstein and was to celebrate the opening of the Cathedral of Christ the
Saviour, an event timed to coincidewith the Moscow Exhibitionof Industry and
the Arts and the silver jubilee of the Tsar.
Since the building of the Cathedral was designed to commemorate the
events of 1812, when the armies of Napoleon had been forced to retreat from
Moscow, Tchaikovsky chose to make his overture a graphic description of the
conflict, with the French represented by the Marseillaise and Russia by an
Orthodox chant and a folk-song, and, in final victory, by "God save the Tsar".
The piece, therefore, aptly honoured a royal occasion as well as a religious
and patriotic one. The inclusionof cannon in the scoring has madethe overture
a popular spectacle.
The ltalian Capriccio was written in 1880. Tchaikovsky had started the work
in Rome, where he spent part of the winter of 187911880 with his brother
Modest and the latter's young pupil Kolya. Originally envisaged as an ltalian
Suite on folk melodies, the work was modelled to some extent on Glinka's
Spanish fantasias. The Capriccio opens with a fanfare that echoes the sound
that thd composer heard every morning in Rome from the barracks next to his
hotel. Four other ltalian melodies are used, the last a Neapolitan tarantella
known as Ciccuua. The work received its first performance in Moscow in
December, 1880, under the direction of Nikolay Rubinstein.
The Marche Slave, Opus 31, was completed early in October 1876, in
response to a request from Nikolay Rubinstein for a work to be played at a
Moscowconcert in aid of victims of theTurks in the Balkans, where Montenegro
and Serbia had declared war against Turkey, and Russian pro-Slav feelings
were running high.
The original title of the work was the Serbo-Russian March, and Tchaikovsky
used in it fragments of three Serbian melodies, with a reference to the Russian .
Imperial anthem before the re-appearanceof material of the opening in a final,
third section. The anthem appears in fuller form at the climax of a march that
was well calculated to appeal to the patriotic emotions of the day.
'
*
-