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Tchaikovsky |
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TH 241 Andante & FinaleFor piano with orchestra, Op. 79 (1893).
HistoryThe Andante and Finale were initially intended to be the second and third movements of the Piano Concerto No. 3 in three movements, reworked from the Symphony in E-flat major. The second and third movements were left in sketch form. In November 1894, Sergei Taneev (at Modest Tchaikovsky’s request) began to study the unfinished sketches of these two movements: "I have copied out from Petr Il’ich’s notebooks sketches for two movements of a future piano piece. To start with I made a clean copy, and then began to orchestrate them. The Andante is delightful, but unfortunately Petr Il'ich did not leave it for orchestra, but arranged it as a piano piece" [1]. Evidently, Sergei Taneev ’s work on the Andante and Finale took some time. There was also the question of how the work should be published - whether to return to the author’s original intention, i.e. to publish it in the form of a composition for orchestra, or to preserve its subsequent arrangement and to rework it as a piano piece [2]. In April 1895, Aleksandr Ziloti wrote to Modest Tchaikovsky: "It's a great pity that the Andante and Allegro will not be published for the piano" [3]. but nevertheless, Taneev reworked the pieces in concerto form, and on 24 August 1895 he reported to Modest that he was "finishing my task of orchestrating Petr Il’ich’s piano compositions. On my arrival in Moscow I will add the finishing touches and hand the full score over to you" [4]. However. the reworking of the full score was delayed [5]. In a letter of 24 February 1896, Taneev promised Modest that "it will shortly be put in order" [6]. It was eventually decided that the Andante & Finale would be published by Mitrofan Beliaiev, together with the overtures Fatum, The Storm and The Voevoda. In letters from Mitrofan Beliaiev to Sergei Taneev the question of how to publish the Andante & Finale was raised once again: "You suggested these two movements should be published as an orchestral work;", Beliaiev wrote to Taneev, "... but it seems to me that can be done later; just now I want to have all the materials so that there will be no interruption to the process of publication" [7]. But in a letter of 27 April he raised the matter again: "I have a related question: how ought I to print the two unpublished movements of Petr Il’ich’s piano concerto, given that Jurgenson has already published the first movement? They can hardly be called two abandoned movements from the concerto! But could they be published as an independent work, i.e. as a fourth concerto in two movements, or as two concert pieces? Or would it not be better to publish them only in orchestral form as two movements from an unfinished symphony?" [8]. It appears that Sergei Taneev and Modest Tchaikovsky both considered publishing the works in two forms - as a piano concerto (or Konzertstück) and as an orchestral composition [9]. Eventually the Andante & Finale were published in Taneev’s version for piano and orchestra in 1897. by the firm of Beliaiev. The first performance took place on 8 February 1897 in Saint Petersburg at the first Russian symphony concert (the piano part performed by Sergei Taneev), conducted by Felix Blumenfeld. On 17 October 1898, Sergei Taneev again performed the Andante and Finale at one of Mitrofan Beliaiev's Russian symphony concerts (in Moscow), conducted by Nikolai Rimskii-Korsakov. For this concert Taneev made some changes to the piano part: "I have preserved everything that was Petr Il’ich’s, but made it more interesting for the pianist, and it seems to me that the concerto will be more successful in this form" [10]. From: Музыкальное наследие Чайковского (1958),
pp. 338-339 Notes:
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