Symphony in E flat (Tchaikovsky)

This article is about Tchaikovsky's symphony. For the John Clifford's 1972 ballet, see Symphony in E flat (ballet).

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 (i.e. sixth) 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 orchestra. Soviet composer Semyon Bogatyryov reconstructed the symphony from Tchaikovsky's sketches and various re-workings between 1951 and 1955. This version was premiered on February 7, 1957, in Moscow by the Moscow Region Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by M. Terian, and was published by the State Music Publishers in Moscow in 1961.

Form

The Bogatyryov reconstruction follows the traditional four-movement pattern:

1. Allegro brillante

   This movement was used for the Third Piano Concerto, Op. posth. 75.

2. Andante

   Taneyev used this music for the Andante for Piano and Orchestra, Op. posth. 79. More recently, it was reused as the slow movement of a projected Cello Concerto.

3. Scherzo: Vivace assai

   Perceiving that Tchaikovsky would have written a scherzo for this symphony, Bogatyryov orchestrated this piece from Tchaikovsky's Scherzo-Fantasie, Op.72 No.10.

4. Finale: Allegro maestoso

   Taneyev used this music for the Finale for Piano and Orchestra, Op. posth. 79

Recordings

Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the American premiere and made the world premiere recording in 1962 for Columbia Records. The original LPs were released in stereo as MS 6349 and in mono as ML 5749. This recording was later digitally remastered and issued on CD. Only five other conductors have recorded it: Neeme Järvi, Sergei Skripka, Kyung-Soo Won, Kees Bakels, and Leo Ginzburg.

The Need to Write ...

"I literally cannot live without working," Tchaikovsky once wrote to the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, "For no sooner has some labor been completed ... there appears a desire to begin at once on some new labor.... [U]nder such circumstances this new labor is not always provoked by true creative necessity."

Tchaikovsky (left) with his nephew, Vladimir "Bob" Davidov, who dissuaded the composer from totally abandoning the E flat Symphony.

By November 1889, Tchaikovsky's creative itch was becoming extreme. A year had passed since completing the Fifth Symphony, and eight months since writing another musical composition. Tchaikovsky confided to the Grand Duke that he had long aspired to crown his creative career with a grand symphony on some as yet undefined programme, but it was a further 18 months before, evidently on his return voyage from America, he jotted down a few preliminary ideas for what might become such a piece. More important still was a programme he roughed out, possibly at the same time: "The ultimate essence ... of the symphony is Life. First part – all impulse, passion, confidence, thirst for activity. Must be short (the finale death – result of collapse). Second part love: third disappointments; fourth ends dying away (also short)."

During the following months, while at work on The Nutcracker and Iolanta, he continued to note down further materials, but when at last he began systematic work on the piece, many of these and earlier ideas were discarded; nor was the programme to be used. Others were drawn in, however, progress was rapid, and by June 8, 1890, both the first movement and the finale were fully sketched. He had hoped to continue work in July and August, but further composition was delayed until October. Nevertheless, by 4 November the entire symphony was sketched, and within three days the first movement was scored up to the recapitulation.

Tchaikovsky had already offered to conduct the premiere of the symphony at a charity concert in Moscow the following February. However, after another enforced break, the composer took another look at the sketches and experienced total disenchantment. "It's composed simply for the sake of composing something; there's nothing at all interesting or sympathetic in it," he wrote to his nephew Vladimir Davydov on December 16, 1892. "I've decided to discard and forget it ... Perhaps," he added, though how he can hardly have realized how precisely, "the subject still has the potential to stir my imagination."

Davydov's response came quickly and, to the composer's surprise, very strongly worded. In a letter dated December 19, 1892, Davydov wrote, "I feel sorry of course, for the symphony that you have cast down from the cliff as they used to do with the children of Sparta, because it seemed to you deformed, whereas it is probably as much a work of genius as the first five."

... Versus the Need to Express

Tchaikovsky gave up on the symphony because he now found the music impersonal, lacking the introspection Tchaikovsky felt a symphony needed urgently. He had no wish to continue making, as he said, "meaningless harmonies and a rhythmical scheme expressive of nothing".

However, Davidov's comments spurred Tchaikovsky to reuse the sketches instead of totally writing them off. The music may have meant nothing to him on a personal level emotionally, but that did not mean it was worthless. The main theme was highly attractive, skillfully worked out, extroverted. When worked out by a composer whose handling of such a theme could become a delight to hear and, for the musicologist, to analyze, the results could become extremely worthwhile after all.

More importantly, the composer did not abandon the thought of writing a new symphony based on the program he conceived. Though his efforts with the E flat symphony did not turn out as planned, they influenced his conception not long afterwards of what would become the Pathétique symphony. Tchaikovsky converted the symphony's first movement into a one-movement piano concerto (published as Op. 75); after his death, two other movements were completed in a piano concerto version by the Russian composer Sergei Taneyev, who added them to Tchaikovsky's first movement to produce a full-scale concerto. Known as "Andante" and "Finale," the Tchaikovsky-Taneyev movements are now known as Tchaikovsky's Opus 79.

Bogatyryov reconstruction

A reconstruction of the original symphony from the sketches and various reworkings was accomplished during 1951–1955 by the Soviet composer Semyon Bogatyryov (1890–1960), who brought the symphony into finished, fully orchestrated form and issued the score as Tchaikovsky's "Symphony No 7 in E-flat major."

Bogatyryov utilized primary sources, including Tchaikovsky's initial rough sketches, the full orchestral manuscript of about half of the first movement, and the manuscript and printed score of the third piano concerto.

The first movement of the piano concerto was fully orchestrated by the composer, while the second and third movements were later orchestrated by Sergei Taneyev, Tchaikovsky's friend and fellow composer.

While the first movement sketches and completed version for piano and orchestra were essentially complete, Bogatyryov found that only 81 of the 204 bars of the second movement were in Tchaikovsky's hand. Here he utilized Tchaikovsky's piano score for the Andante for Piano and Orchestra, Taneyev's orchestration, and a very rough draft by Tchaikovsky.

For the third movement, Bogatyryov followed the insistence of the composer's brother Modeste that this should be a scherzo and orchestrated a scherzo from Tchaikovsky's Op. 72 piano pieces, as well as more sketches by the composer. Remarkably, the piece fits neatly between the second and fourth movements and even includes final chords that are echoed by the beginning of the fourth movement.

The reconstruction of the fourth movement was based on the piano score for the Finale for Piano and Orchestra, the composer's sketches, and the published orchestration by Taneyev.

References

• Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Years of Wandering (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1986)
• Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Final Years (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992)
• Hanson, Lawrence and Elisabeth, Tchaikovsky: The Man Behind the Music (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company)
• Poznansky, Alexander Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man (New York: Schirmer Books, 1991)
• Poznansky, Alexander. Tchaikovsky Through Others' Eyes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999)
• Warrack, John, Tchaikovsky (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973)

External links

• Symphony in E flat at Tchaikovsky Research.