In 2010, it has been 170 years since the greatest Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born (1840–1893). Firma Melodiya times the release of the album P.I. Tchaikovsky: Forgotten Pages to this event. The recording of the concert devoted to the 150th anniversary of the composer presented on this CD includes some rarely performed compositions unveiling new dimensions of his talent and can't help but arouse the keenest interest. These compositions were brilliantly performed at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on May 5th, 1990 by the State Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov.
The overture to Alexander Ostrovsky's drama The Storm (1864) was written by Tchaikovsky when he was a student of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In spring of 1864, Anton Rubinstein who taught orchestration to Tchaikovsky told his students to compose an opera overture.
The composer's brother Modest Ilyich remembered: “Ever since that time when he dedicated himself to music he dreamed of writing an opera based on his most favourite Russian drama – Ostrovsky's The Storm.”
After Tchaikovsky's passing, a literature programme of the overture was found among his notes: “Prelude: adagio (Katerina's childhood and all her life before marriage), (allegro) hints of the storm; strive for true happiness and love, (Allegro appassionato) – her emotional struggle – sudden transition to the night on the Volga bank; again struggle, but with a shade of somewhat feverish happiness; omen of the storm (the motif after adagio repeats and develops); the storm, apogee of desperate struggle and death.”
It is interesting to note that the composer slightly diverted from this programme when he composed the overture – the character of Kabanikha is there in the music.
Modest Tchaikovsky remarked: “When Pyotr Ilyich played his composition to us, he mentioned Kabanikha in the first allegro.” Besides, the designations of tempos and characters do not correspond to those in score.
Rubinstein subjected his student's first experience to criticism stating that he “was reckless with the form and instrumentation.” Nevertheless, The Storm outlined the main direction of the young composer's work, and Tchaikovsky repeatedly returned to this subject matter in a number of his compositions – in the slower part of his First Symphony, Concerto Overture, operas The Voyevoda, and The Oprichnik. The overture was never published or performed when the author was alive. Its premiere took place in 1896 and was conducted by Alexander Glazunov.
Also, during his student's years, Tchaikovsky composed Characteristic Dances (1865) which were not preserved and which, as his brother Modest witnessed, were a basis of The Dances of the Hay Maidens from the second act of The Voyevoda included in this album.
The symphonic poem for orchestra Fatum (1868) was dedicated by the young composer to Mily Balakirev. This early piece was the first time when Tchaikovsky addressed a “fatal” subject area which subsequently went throughout his creative activity. The collision of an individual with an inexorable fate became one of the key ideas in the world of the composer's images. Unlike The Storm, Fatum has no detailed plot. In order to decrypt the meaning of a mysterious name of the poem, the organisers of the premiere in the Russian Music Society put the lines from a poem by Konstantin Batyushkov on the playbills: “You know that grey-haired Melchizedek uttered when he was bidding farewell to his life: The man is born a slave, and he will be a slave in his grave, What for was his way through a valley of scanty tears, Why did he suffer, endure, weep and disappear.” However, this poetry selected for the already composed music could not adequately express Tchaikovsky's message. Quite the contrary, his music has not the pessimism and disillusion of the poet's lines.
Fatum was premiered in Moscow on 15th February, 1869, and conducted by Nikolay Rubinstein. Tchaikovsky wrote in a letter to his brother: “I'm writing this late at night after the concert of the Music Society. My fantasia Fatum was performed for the first time. It seems to be the best I've written so far, at least this is what they say (significant success).” In St. Petersburg, the poem was conducted by Balakirev, and according to him, “not much applause.” The composition was seriously criticised in the press. The composer was reproached with “incoherent and uncoordinated form torn with frequent pauses and burdened with a too numerous number of different motifs.” Under the influence of his critics, Tchaikovsky burnt the Fatum score. In 1896, after Tchaikovsky died, the score was restored through preserved orchestral parts by R. Schorning, a librarian of the Moscow Conservatory, and published by Mitrofan Beliayev.
The composers approached William Shakespeare's Hamlet twice. For the first time it was in 1888 when he composed an overture-fantasia, and three years later when he wrote score to the theatre production of Hamlet for the benefit of Lucien Gitri, an actor of the Mikhailov Theatre. Tchaikovsky dedicated the overture-fantasia, Op. 67, to Edvard Grieg whose music enchanted him. The idea of composing music to the tragedy by Shakespeare was prompted by Tchaikovsky's brother Modest in 1876. However, the composer followed his brother's advice only twelve years later. The overture-fantasia has no literature programme. It is rather a piece depicting the Prince of Denmark, his disposition, energy, thoughts and feelings. The premiere of the overture was held in St. Petersburg on 12th November, 1888, and conducted by the author.
