Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote his Second Symphony in 1872 in the Ukraine, in Kamenka, the estate of his sister Alexandra. These circumstances are the cause for the abundance of Ukrainian songs, which form the thematic basis of the symphony. For Tchaikovsky such an abundance of folk music derivations was never characteristic to such an extent – usually he limited himself to quoting one or two songs in the slow movements or Finales of his instrumental cycles (such as, for instance, the First String Quartet, the First Piano Concerto and the Fourth Symphony). However the charm of the Ukrainian melodicism (three of the songs from the first, second and fourth movements were sung to Tchaikovsky by an old gardener, Piotr Gerasimovich), as well as his aspiration not to lag behind the latest musical trends in the guise of the group of the “Mighty Five,” who were intensely acquiring influence led the composer to this particular decision. Tchaikovsky’s affinity to the Mighty Five, all of whom greeted the symphony with great enthusiasm (except for Cui, whose attitude towards Tchaikovsky was exceptionally critical up to the very end), was not only due to his incorporation of folk melodies but also by a means of development very characteristic of them: in the Finale, on which the “center of gravity” of the symphony takes place, the Sonata Allegro form is skillfully hidden within variations on the song “Zhuravel” (“The Crane”), the thematic material of which undoubtedly prevails over everything else. The fantastical Scherzo with a heroic march in the Trio resembles the exotic pages in Borodin’s music by its expression and methods of development. However Tchaikovsky here remains himself – an inspired lyricist and a singer of the life of the soul. This can already be heard at the very beginning, in the introduction to the first movement, where the bassoon sounds out a Southern Russian version of the song “Down Mother-Volga River” with the accompaniment in the strings, conveying a noble pathos by means of its chief themes, which follow the introduction and their dramatic development. In the second movement, which stands out by itself, Tchaikovsky incorporated a fragment of his own unpublished music – the Wedding March from the unfinished opera “Undina,” as well as the song “The Little Spinning Wheel.” These pages of the score are permeated with a magical charm, which enables the listener to forget about the seeming incompatibility of the musical material.
The Second Symphony was first performed on February 7, 1873 under the direction of Nikolai Rubinstein. Later, in 1880, Tchaikovsky made a revision of the symphony – the present disc contains a recording of precisely the latter version. Though it did not achieve the popularity of the First Symphony and the last three, the Second Symphony, nonetheless, presents itself as one of the most intricate and illustrative scores by Tchaikovsky – a circumstance which caused to name this symphony as his favorite of all of Tchaikovsky’s works in the genre.
Serenade for strings is one of the most popular Tchaikovsky’s works. The genre of serenade, being wide-spread in the 18th century, again became popular among European composers a century later. Dvorak, Brahms, Volkman composed serenades. Creating his serenade, Tchaikovsky based himself both on the 18th-century examples (he wrote: “In the first part I paid tribute to my worshipping of Mozart. It is deliberate imitation of his manner, and I would be happy if one found out that it is not very different from the master”) and on his contemporaries’ experience with Volkman, a Hungarian composer, being especially close to him. Indeed, in the nature of the introduction (Andante non troppo) and of main section (Allegro moderato) we can find typical features of instrumental composing of the beginning of the 18th century (introduction) and of Mozart’s epoch (main section, which is not only filled with Mozart’s allusions but also borrows from that distant period its clear, transparent, non-romantic constructiveness). The second part, the Waltz (Moderato, dolce e molto grazioso), represents an essential feature of the serenade — a reference to ‘everyday’ music (in the 18th century it was a minuet). However, Tchaikovsky manages to create on this ‘everyday’ basis the music of dazzling beauty and impeccable form. The Elegy (the third part) has a clearly vocal nature of thematic matter. The features of introduction texture demonstrate Tchaikovsky’s favourite technique — an imitation of liturgical chant — the strings are interpreted as ‘choir’ (as, for example, in the slow part of the Third Quartet), and the main, song-like melody of the Elegy is, of course, a romance, an ingenious ‘song without words’ among the others created by Tchaikovsky. Comparison of these two contrasting music spheres gives birth to the only ‘spot’ of minor in the Serenade — the coda of the Elegy, which is, however, finished with quiet major chord. We face other kind of ‘everyday music’ in the finale of The Serenade. ‘The Russian theme’ of the finale is a dancing folk song ‘Under the apple tree’ penetrating the whole finale (for example, its motif accompanies song-like second theme, quite in the style of classical masters of ideal sonata forms). The traditions of the two centuries of Russian and European music merged in this masterpiece (even of the moderate size) of the ingenious composer.
