Symphony No. 1 (Tchaikovsky)
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Tchaikovsky's first symphony (Op. 13 in G minor) is also known as "Winter Dreams".
The parts are:
- Allegro tranquillo
- Adagio cantabile ma non tanto
- Scherzo, allegro scherzando giocoso
- Finale, andante lugubre-allegro maestoso.
Tchaikovsky started to work on this symphony in 1866 when he had just accepted a job as professor of harmony at the Moscow Conservatory. He dedicated the symphony to Nicolai Rubinstein, who had offered him this job. Rubinstein was also the first to conduct a part of the symphony, namely the scherzo. Only in 1868 the complete work was performed. It was well received, but Tchaikovsky kept changing the symphony until it was finally published in 1875. He would later say that although it was an immature work, the content was basically good. The first two parts are about a journey in the winter and about a winter landscape; mostly the music is light-hearted.
Although relatively lightweight compared with what was to follow, the composition almost cost Tchaikovsky his life.
He never again worked through the night on ANY work. He became convonced that he would die before finishing it. Why this torment? Well, partly, of course, Tchikovsky's neurotic character can always be blamed (except that his mental state was often just concocted to give the music a lift, when Tchaikovsky himself, although suffering from bouts of depression all his life) was routinely a good natured, easy going and a very gentle man.)
The truth is that no other composer in history had written a successful Symphony who had not studied in Germany. Germany was where you went to klearn the German tradition and how to rite a Symphony and here was this relatively young man, even at this stage, stermined to do it his way. There's a lot of Schumann in this piece but there is more than the occasional flash of what were to be Tchaikovsky trademarks; scalic passages, outstanding orchestration, brilliant melodic invention AND (and this went ignored for years) his own solution to formal and structural problems.
He revised it in 1882 and although it is flawed, Tchaikovsky was fond of it enough to revise it and to call it a 'sin of my sweet youth'.
It certainly deserves more attention and performances.
