Solo Piano Music
Tchaikovsky wrote over a hundred-odd piano works over the course of his creative life. His first opus comprised two piano pieces, while he completed his final set of piano works after he had finished sketching his last symphony. Except for a piano sonata written while he was a composition student and a second much later in his career, Tchaikovsky's solo piano works consist of character pieces. While his best known set of these works is The Seasons, the compositions in his last set, the Eighteen Pieces, Op. 72, are extremely varied and at times surprising.
Some of Tchaikovsky's piano works can be challenging technically; nevertheless, they are mostly charming, unpretentious compositions intended for amateur pianists. It would therefore be easy to dismiss the entire œuvre as mediocre and merely competent. While this view could hold true to some point, there is more attractive and resourceful music in some of these pieces than one might be inclined to expect. The difference between Tchaikovsky's pieces and many other salon works are patches of striking harmony and unexpected phrase structures which may demand some extra patience but will not remain unrewarded from a musical standpoint. Many of the pieces have titles which give imaginative pointers on how they should be played.
Read more about this topic: Music Of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
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