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Tchaikovsky |
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Tchaikovsky's "Winter Daydreams"The Story of his First SymphonySee also our feature on Unknown Tchaikovsky where audio files of the original version of this symphony can be found. |
"No other work cost him such effort and suffering...". So Modest Tchaikovsky recalled more than three decades after the premiere of his brother's First Symphony [1]. The symphony was the first major piece written by Tchaikovsky after has graduation from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in February 1866. Whether it was during his late winter's journey from Saint Petersburg to take up a teaching position at the Moscow Conservatory that Tchaikovsky conceived the idea for the symphony - mysteriously entitled Winter Daydreams - we may never know; the composer left no explanation for this curious title, nor for the sub-titles of first two movements, "Daydreams of a Winter Journey" and "Gloomy land, misty land". However, it seems that Tchaikovsky had already begun drafting the work in earnest shortly after his arrival in Moscow in March 1866, to lake up lodgings with the new Conservatory's director, Nikolai Rubinstein (who was also to be the work's dedicatee). The earliest reference to the symphony is found in a letter from Tchaikovsky to his brother Anatolii, written on 25 April/7 May 1866 (the composer's twenty-sixth birthday): "My nerves are extremely bad, for the following reasons: 1) my lack of success in composing the symphony; 2) [Nikolai] Rubinstein and [Konstantin] Tarnovskii who, noticing that I'm on edge, spend all day frightening me by various means; 3) the constant thought that I shall soon perish without successfully completing the symphony." Tchaikovsky spent the summer with relatives at a dacha between Peterhof and Saint Petersburg, and from here he reported back to his sister Aleksandra on 7/19 June: "I have already begun to score the symphony... The other night I didn't sleep a wink, because my mind was so busy." According to Modest, writing many years later, the strain of writing such a large-scale work was clearly evident. "Despite painstaking and arduous work, the composition was fraught with difficulty, and while pressing ahead with the symphony, Pëtr Il’ich's nerves became more and more frayed. As a result of this unusually hard work he began to suffer from insomnia, and the sleepless nights paralysed his creative energies. At the end of July this erupted into a terrible nervous attack, the like of which he never again experienced during his lifetime. Doctor Jurgenson, who was summoned to see him, found that he was 'one step away from insanity'. The most distressing symptoms of this illness were dreadful hallucinations, which were so frightening that they resulted in a feeling of complete numbness in all his extremities. The dread of these nervous attacks recurring was such that all his life he refrained from working at night. After this symphony, not a single note from any of his compositions was written at night." [2] The composer's few surviving letters from the summer of 1866 make no further reference to the symphony or his nervous condition. It seems that the symphony was still unfinished by the time Tchaikovsky visited Saint Petersburg towards the end of August, but the composer was anxious to hear the views of his former tutors, Anton Rubinstein and Nikolai Zaremba, on what he had written so far. He hoped that they would approve the work for performance in the next season of Russian Musical Society concerts in Saint Petersburg. "But instead he was sorely disappointed...," wrote Modest. "The symphony was judged very harshly, and was not approved for performance, Amongst other things, Zaremba disapproved of the second theme of the first movement, with which the author himself was very pleased. Nevertheless, the professors' authority was so great that Petr Il’ich bowed down before them and took the symphony to Moscow with the intention of revising it." [3] After his return to Moscow in September 1866, Tchaikovsky's compositional efforts were principally directed towards the Festival Overture on the Danish National Anthem, which was required for an imminent royal visit to the old capital. On 8/20 November, four days before completing the overture, Tchaikovsky informed his brother Anatolii that he was "busy rewriting the symphony'. Modest recalled that in November or December, Tchaikovsky again travelled to Saint Petersburg to show the completed score to Anton Rubinstein, who this time declared declared that only the second and third movements were 'fit for inclusion in a symphony concert'. The Scherzo alone was performed in Moscow on 10/22 December 1866, at the fifth RMS symphony concert of the season, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein, "with no success at all' according to Modest [4]. In Saint Petersburg on 11/23 February 1867, at the ninth RMS symphony concert, Anton Rubinstein conducted the Adagio and Scherzo. Although Tchaikovsky himself was not present, Anatolii reported that the applause was 'satisfactory', although there were no calls for the composer [5]. It seems that the symphony may have been subjected to further revisions before its first complete performance under Nikolai Rubinstein on 3/15 February 1868, at the eighth RMS symphony concert in Moscow [6]. 'My symphony had great success, particularly the improved Adagio,' the composer reported to Anatolii, and according to Nikolai Kashkin, 'The public's enthusiasm surpassed even our [i.e. Tchaikovsky's friends'] expectations' [7]. Nevertheless, it was to be another fifteen years before the complete work was heard again. The Symphony No. 1 included some music dating from Tchaikovsky's student years: the main part of the Scherzo was an orchestral transcription of the third movement from the Piano Sonata in C♯ minor, Op. 80 (1865), transposed down a semitone in its new context, and with a new trio section and brief introduction. Katerina's love-theme from the overture to The Storm, Op. 76 (1864), in a much-slowed version for muted strings alone, serves as the introduction and coda to the second movement. In addition, the Finale makes use of a variant of a folksong (’Ia poseiu li mlada-mladen'ka tsvetikov’), which six years later Tchaikovsky harmonized as No. 39 of V. P. Prokunin's collection of 65 Russian Folk Songs [8] In 1872 Tchaikovsky re-used the introduction and closing sections
of the symphony's Finale in the Cantata for the Opening
of the Polytechnic Exposition in Moscow. In 1874 Jurgenson expressed an interest in publishing the First Symphony, and Tchaikovsky took the opportunity to make some alterations to the work before it appeared in print. Notes for the revised version of the symphony are contained in one of the composer's notebooks, between sketches for the String Quartet No. 2 (completed in January 1874) and the opera Vakula the Smith (begun in June 1874), which would indicate that Tchaikovsky carried out his revision sometime during the first half of 1874. The main change was the substitution of a completely new second subject in the first movement, but he also made some small cuts and alterations in the second movement and Finale, and changes to dynamic markings and articulation throuhgout [9]. The revised symphony was published by Jurgenson in January 1875, although it was not performed until 19 November/1 December 1883 at the fifth RMS symphony concert in Moscow, conducted by Max Erdmannsdörfer. The Saint Petersburg première took place on 22 October/3 November 1886, in the second Russian Symphony Concert, conducted by Georgii Diutsh. Tchaikovsky visited Tiflis [Tblissi] in the spring of 1886, at which time Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov had planned to conduct a performance of the First Symphony. However, in the event this performance could not take place because Jurgenson sent him the wrong materials (full score and orchestral parts). On 15/27 April 1886, Tchaikovsky complained to his publisher from Tiflis:
"... I like this symphony very much, and deeply regret that it's had such an unhappy life", he added. Indeed, Tchaikovsky retained an affection for Winter Daydreams until the end of his days. At the time of its performance in 1883 he wrote: 'Despite all its many shortcomings, I still harbour a weakness for it, because it was a sin of my sweet youth,' and 'Although in many respects it is very immature, essentially it still has more substance than many of my other, more mature works.' [11] In 1888 Jurgenson printed the orchestral parts, and a second edition of the full score, which incorporated numerous corrections and minor changes to the phrasing and dynamic markings. Although the original version of the symphony did not appear in print during Tchaikovsky's lifetime, the text of this version was rediscovered many years later. In 1949 the score which Jurgenson sent in error to Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov in 1886 was discovered in the library of the Moscow Conservatory [12]. This score, consisting of a printed copy off the Jurgenson's 1874 edition, with passages from the original version copied out and pasted by an unknown hand, is now preserved in the Tchaikovsky House-Museum archive at Klin. The original parts used for the first performances have also recently come to light in the archive of the Moscow Conservatory [13]. A manuscript copy of the full score is preserved in the M. I. Glinka Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow, with the passages revised in 1874 (i.e. folios 11, 12, 35 and 116) written in Tchaikovsky's hand, along with numerous corrections and additions by the composer throughout [14]. However, the whereabouts of Tchaikovsky's original sketches and autograph full score of the symphony remain unknown. Copyright © 2006 Brett Langston Notes:
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