Music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Symphonies

Symphonies

See also: Symphonies by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky's first three symphonies, while seemingly optimistic and nationalistic, are also chronicles of his attempts to reconcile his training from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Russian folk music and his own innate penchant for melody. Both worked against sonata form, the paramount architectural concept in Western classical music, not with it. The First, while conventional in form, shows Tchaikovsky's individuality strongly; it is rich in melodic invention and exudes Mendelssohnian charm and grace. The Second Symphony is among the more accessible of Tchaikovsky's works and exists in two versions. While the latter version is the one generally performed today, Tchaikovsky's friend and former student Sergei Taneyev considered the earlier one to be finer compositionally speaking. The Third, the only symphony Tchaikovsky completed in a major key, is written in five movements, similar to Robert Schumann's Rhenish Symphony, shows Tchaikovsky alternating between writing in a more orthodox symphonic manner and writing music as a vehicle to express his emotional life; with the introduction of dance rhythms into every movement except the slow one, the composer widens the field of symphonic contrasts both within and between movements.

With the last three numbered symphonies and his program symphony Manfred, Tchaikovsky became one of the few composers in the late 19th century who could impose his personality upon the symphony to give the form new life. Brown calls the Fourth Symphony a breakthrough work in terms of emotional depth and complexity, particularly in its very large opening movement. The Fifth Symphony is a more regular work, though perhaps not a more conventional one. The Sixth Symphony, generally interpreted as a declaration of despair, is a work of prodigious originality and power; to Brown, it is perhaps one of Tchaikovsky's most consistent and perfectly composed works. These symphonies are recognized as highly original examples of symphonic form and are frequently performed. Manfred, written between the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, is also a major piece, as well as a demanding one. The music is often very tough, the first movement completely original in form, while the second movement proves diaphanous and seemingly unsubstantial but absolutely right for the program it illustrates.

Tchaikovsky sketched the Symphony in E flat in 1892, before beginning the Pathetique, but discarded it as unsatisfactory. After finishing the Pathetique, he recycled the opening movement as his Third Piano Concerto, which was left as a single-movement Allegro de concert upon his death. Although the composer's friend and colleague Sergei Taneyev completed the slow movement and finale for piano and orchestra and these are sometimes combined with the single-movement work to form a full-length concerto, it remains unclear whether this was actually the composer's intent. The symphony was reconstituted in what is believed to be its original form by Russian composer Semyon Bogatyriev; it was published in 1961 after a 10-year period of reconstruction.

• No. 1 in G minor, Op. 13, Winter Daydreams (1866)
• No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17, Little Russian (1872)
• No. 3 in D major, Op. 29, Polish (1875)
• No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 (1877–1878)
• Manfred Symphony, B minor, Op. 58; inspired by Byron's poem Manfred (1885)
• No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 (1888)
• No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, Pathétique (1893)
• Symphony in E-flat (reconstructed by Semyon Bogatyrev; published in 1961 as Symphony No. 7)