Cello Concerto (Tchaikovsky)
Encyclopedia
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
is a conjectural work based in part on a 60-bar fragment found on the back of the rough draft for the last movement of the composer's Sixth Symphony
Symphony No. 6 (Tchaikovsky)
The Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, Pathétique is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's final completed symphony, written between February and the end of August 1893. The composer led the first performance in Saint Petersburg on 16/28 October of that year, nine days before his death...
, the Pathétique. In 2006, Ukrainian composer and cellist Yuriy Leonovich and Tchaikovsky researcher Brett Langston (co-author of The Tchaikovsky Handbook) completed the work.
This work is not to be confused with the Cello Concerto in E Major
Cello Concerto in E Major (Cassado-Tchaikovsky)
The Cello Concerto in E major was not written by Tchaikovsky. It was created by the cellist Gaspar Cassadó, who took about nine of Tchaikovsky's piano pieces , and orchestrated them as, collectively, a concerto....
that cellist Gaspar Cassadó
Gaspar Cassadó
Gaspar Cassadó i Moreu was a Spanish cellist and composer of the early 20th century. He was born in Barcelona to a church musician father and began taking cello lessons at age seven. When he was nine, he played in a recital where Pablo Casals was in the audience; Casals immediately offered to...
arranged in 1940 from some of Tchaikovsky's Op. 72 piano works. Leonovich, however, cites his learning of the Cassadó arrangement as an inspiration for his own work.
Structure
- Allegro maestosoMaestosoMaestoso is an Italian musical term and is used to direct performers to play a certain passage of music in a stately, dignified and majestic fashion or, it is used to describe music as such. The term is commonly used in relatively slow pieces; however, there are numerous examples - such as the...
(B Minor) - Sonata formSonata formSonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...
- 60-bar sketch is used as the first theme. Rest of the movement, including the second theme, is all new.
- Andante (G Major) - Ternary formTernary formTernary form, sometimes called song form, is a three-part musical form, usually schematicized as A-B-A. The first and third parts are musically identical, or very nearly so, while the second part in some way provides a contrast with them...
- Sketch of the slow movement from Andante and Finale for piano and orchestraAndante and Finale (Tchaikovsky)Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Andante and Finale for piano and orchestra was initially intended as the slow movement and finale of the Symphony in E flat, a work he started in 1892 but eventually abandoned. Tchaikovsky began reworking the sketches for these two movements into the second and third...
.
- Sketch of the slow movement from Andante and Finale for piano and orchestra
- Allegro vivoVivo-Computer and technology:* Video In Video Out* Vivo Software, streaming format, acquired in 1998 by RealNetworks* VivoActive, Vivo Software's video format* Vivo S.A., a major Brazilian mobile phone company...
-Meno mosso-PrestoPresto-As a common word:* An incantation or interjection used by some stage magicians* A musical score marking indicating a fast tempo* An exclamation to mean: [to be completed] right away, instantly, i.e. "magically"-Places:*Presto, Bolivia...
(B Minor) - Rondo formRondoRondo, and its French equivalent rondeau, is a word that has been used in music in a number of ways, most often in reference to a musical form, but also to a character-type that is distinct from the form...
- Russian folk song "Our Wine Cellar" is used as a first theme, and an 8-bar sketch to the unfinished Cello Sonata as the second theme.
History
Louis Diémer
Louis-Joseph Diémer was a French pianist and composer.- Life :Diémer studied at the Paris Conservatoire, winning premiers prix in piano, harmony and accompaniment, counterpoint and fugue, and solfège, and a second prix in organ...
and flautist
Flautist
A flautist or flutist is a musician who plays an instrument in the flute family. See List of flautists.The choice of "flautist" versus "flutist" is the source of dispute among players of the instrument...
Claude-Paul Taffanel
Claude-Paul Taffanel
Claude-Paul Taffanel was a French flautist, conductor and instructor regarded as the founder of the French Flute School that dominated much of flute composition and performance during the mid-20th century....
. By 1893, this list of projects also included an eleventh opera. Odessan journalist V. P. Sokol'nikov remembered that during a visit to Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
in early 1893, Tchaikovsky played through some sketches with cellist Vladimir Alois. However, nothing to confirm this account has yet come to light.
We do know that in October 1893, Tchaikovsky invited cellists Anatoliy Brandukov
Anatoliy Brandukov
Anatoliy Andreyevich Brandukov was a Russian cellist who premiered many cello pieces of prominent composers including Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Born as Russian classical music was flourishing in the middle of the 19th century, he worked with many of the important composers and...
and Julian Poplavsky to his home in Klin and asked Brandukov to bring the score for Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
' First Cello Concerto
Cello Concerto No. 1 (Saint-Saëns)
Camille Saint-Saëns composed his Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33 in 1872, when the composer was age 37. He wrote this work for the Belgian cellist, viola de gamba player and instrument maker Auguste Tolbecque. Tolbecque was part of a distinguished family of musicians closely associated...
so he could study it, as Tchaikovsky had been scheduled to conduct this work in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
with Brandukov as soloist. During this visit, Poplavsky and Brandukov took advantage of their host's good spirits and asked him to write them a cello concerto. Tchaikovsky said, "Why don't you play my Variations [on a Rococo Theme
Variations on a Rococo Theme
The Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33, for cello and orchestra was the closest Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ever came to writing a full concerto for cello and orchestra. The style was inspired by Mozart, Tchaikovsky's role model, and makes it clear that Tchaikovsky admired the Classical style very...
]?" Poplavsky mentioned the difficulty of offering the variations, and short cello pieces in general, instead of a full-length concerto. "You don't have to play in order to be annoying," Tchaikovsky joked"—but he also promised he would write a cello concerto. Within a month, however, the composer would be dead.
Yuri Leonovich first heard of the Tchaikovsky Cello Concerto when he was 16 years old. Intrigued to find out more about the work, he learned the composer had never completed it. Continuing his research, Leonovich discovered Brett Langston’s web site about Tchaikovsky. This site included a comprehensive list of all works by the composer, both sketched and realized. Correspondence with Langston led Leonovich to the 60-measure sketch Tchaikovsky had left and encouraged him to complete the work.
First Theme
The fragment Tchaikovsky left after his death, found in the Cajkovskij-Symposium and published by Schott, is more than 60 bars long. Much of the material has been crossed out. Since it was found on four sides of the rough draft of the Sixth Symphony, it has been previously thought to be the original opening of the symphony's finale. The music is notated on three systems, with the melody being noted on the upper system with the bass clef. The style is of genuine violin music. Nevertheless, the general character of this music, with orchestral accompaniment written on the two systems below it, infers that this fragment actually belongs to the cello concerto Tchaikovsky had promised to write.No letters or commentary is currently available to show how Tchaikovsky would have structured this work. As Brett Langston has mentioned, however, in other works such as the Pathétique, Tchaikovsky's sketches often began with the main theme or themes, with the introductory material added at a later stage.
Andante
As for the central andante, though Tchaikovsky's friend Sergei TaneyevSergei Taneyev
Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev , was a Russian composer, pianist, teacher of composition, music theorist and author.-Life:...
arranged it for piano and orchestra after the composer's death, Tchaikovsky himself had left no indication as to how or whether to use this music; it was simply a discard from his abandoned Symphony in E flat
Symphony in E flat (Tchaikovsky)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony in E flat, Op. posth., was commenced after the Symphony No. 5, and was intended initially to be the composer's next symphony. Tchaikovsky abandoned this work in 1892, only to reuse much of it in the Third Piano Concerto and Andante and Finale for piano and...
, written prior to the Pathétique. Both Taneyev and Modest Tchaikovsky questioned at some length how the work should be presented—as an independent concert piece, as part of a two-movement concerto-type work, or in purely orchestral form. Also, once he and Modest decided how to proceed, Taneyev employed a solo cello in concert with the piano soloist, reminiscent of the "triple concerto" passages in the Second Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Tchaikovsky)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major, Op. 44, was written in 1879-1880. It was dedicated to Nikolai Rubinstein, who had insisted he be allowed to perform it at the premiere as a way of making up for his harsh criticism of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto. Rubinstein was...
. Therefore, using this music for solo cello and orchestra might not seem against the composer's intent.
First Theme
Though there is no idea whether Tchaikovsky would have used the Russian folk song "Our Wine Cellar" [Винный нашь колодезь] which opens this movement, he was at least familiar with it, having arranged it for piano 4-hands as No. 29 of his Fifty Russian Folk-Songs (1868–69).Second Theme
An eight-bar theme in G majorG major
G major is a major scale based on G, with the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Its key signature has one sharp, F; in treble-clef key signatures, the sharp-symbol for F is usually placed on the first line from the top, though in some Baroque music it is placed on the first space from the bottom...
, found in one of the composer's notebooks, became the second theme of the concluding rondo. Headed "Allegro (idea for sonata with cello)," this theme is dated 24 November 1891.
Introduction and Greeting
While Tchaikovsky wrote the first theme of the Allegro maestoso, Leonovich tops it and precedes it with a 12-bar introduction of his own inspiration. Leonovich also wrote an erotic and suggestive second theme inspired by his family to complement the opening motive. The second theme is in G majorG major
G major is a major scale based on G, with the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Its key signature has one sharp, F; in treble-clef key signatures, the sharp-symbol for F is usually placed on the first line from the top, though in some Baroque music it is placed on the first space from the bottom...
, assuming that Leonvich remembers F sharps, which Leonovich considers an unlikely key relationship for Tchaikovsky to have used since Tchaikovsky wrote the first theme in B minor
B minor
B minor is a minor scale based on B, consisting of the pitches B, C, D, E, F, G, and A. The harmonic minor raises the A to A. Its key signature has two sharps .Its relative major is D major, and its parallel major is B major....
.
Development
Ignoring the apparent clues left by Tchaikovsky as to how he would have developed this movementMovement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...
, Leonovich also takes the development
Musical development
In European classical music, musical development is a process by which a musical idea is communicated in the course of a composition. It refers to the transformation and restatement of initial material, and is often contrasted with musical variation, which is a slightly different means to the same...
into his own hands, following a linear pattern similar to that in the Fourth Symphony
Symphony No. 4 (Tchaikovsky)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36, was written between 1877 and 1878. The symphony's first performance was at a Russian Musical Society concert in Saint Petersburg on February 10 /February 22 1878, with Nikolai Rubinstein as conductor.- Form :The symphony is in four...
and Second Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Tchaikovsky)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major, Op. 44, was written in 1879-1880. It was dedicated to Nikolai Rubinstein, who had insisted he be allowed to perform it at the premiere as a way of making up for his harsh criticism of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto. Rubinstein was...
. Exploring the mediant area Leonovich calls typical of Romantic composers, he allows the music to move to D major
D major
D major is a major scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. Its key signature consists of two sharps. Its relative minor is B minor and its parallel minor is D minor....
instead of B major
B major
In music theory, B major is a major scale based on B. The pitches B, C, D, E, F, G, and A are all part of the B major scale. Its key signature has five sharps....
in the recapitulation
Recapitulation (music)
In music theory, the recapitulation is one of the sections of a movement written in sonata form. The recapitulation occurs after the movement's development section, and typically presents once more the musical themes from the movement's exposition...
. He says he also made this decision for practical reasons.