Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(b. Votkinsk, 7 May 1840; d. St. Petersburg, 6 November 1893)

First Suite for Orchestra, op. 43 (27 August 1878 – 2 September 1879)

Preface

In the summer of 1878 Tchaikovsky, exhausted by the mental exertions of his Fourth Symphony and Eugene Onegin and the emotional turmoil of his abortive marriage, withdrew to his estate of his in-laws in Verbovka for a vacation of hunting, reading, bathing, and nature hikes. But as always he was unable to remain creatively inactive for long, and after four days he threw himself into a new work: a light-hearted orchestral suite that offered him the necessary emotional detachment from his present state. The music flowed from his pen, and in a matter of days he had fully sketched three movements and part of a fourth. His creative euphoria rings out in a letter to his new-found benefactress, Nadezhda von Meck:
"When I arrived in Verbovka I felt I simply could not resist my inner compulsion, and I therefore hastened to set down on paper sketches of this suite. I worked with such enjoyment, such enthusiasm, that I literally did not notice how the hours flew by. At this moment three movements of this future orchestral piece are ready, a fourth is roughly sketched, while the fifth is in my head.... Because I was constantly thinking of you while I was composing this piece, at every stage was asking myself whether this or that bit would please you, whether this or that melody would touch you, I cannot dedicate it to anyone other than my best friend."
Baroness von Meck was more than delighted at this prospect and offered to arrange accommodation for Tchaikovsky in Florence during the winter so that he might complete his projects. When the composer set out for his sister's estate in Kamenka en route to Florence, however, he discovered to his dismay that he had neglected to pack his sketches for the Suite. He ordered them to be forwarded to Florence and quickly drafted two new pieces to complete the work: a "March of the Lilliputians" and a "Dance of the Giants," destined to become movements nos. 4 and 6 in the finished Suite. Having arrived in his splendid quarters in Florence on 2 December he quickly scored the two new movements and waited for their missing fellows to arrive from Moscow. It was thus not until 21 April 1879 that the five movements were finally put in order and could be dispatched to his publisher Jurgenson.

But the Suite was not finished yet. In August 1879, while the plates were being engraved, Tchaikovsky suddenly realized that all five existing movements were in duple meter - an unconscionable oversight. He ordered the engraving process to stop immediately while he quickly composed a waltz to replace movement no. 4. The new Andante was completed in Kamenka and presented to his overjoyed family: "Everybody here is crazy about the Andante," he wrote in a whimsical mood to his publisher, "and after my brother and I had played it as a piano duet, one girl had hysterics (that's a fact!!!). To reduce the fair sex to hysterics is surely the height of artistic triumph!" Jurgenson was less sanguine, however, and argued against dropping the March, thereby creating a work of six movements. The vexed composer referred the dispute to his good friend and fellow pupil Sergey Tanayev, who seconded Jurgenson's opinion and established the work's present six-movement order, in which form it was published in full score and piano reduction by Jurgenson in Moscow before the year was out.

History proved Taneyev and Jurgenson right. The deftly scored March was the great favorite at the première (Moscow, 20 December 1879) and in later years was frequently played separately in concert. But other movements found champions as well: Baroness von Meck's resident pianist, a twenty-year-old Frenchman named Claude Debussy, was enamored of the opening fugue, exclaiming that he had "never heard anything as beautiful among modern fugues." Another admirer of the fugue was Johannes Brahms, who heard the Suite in Leipzig in 1888 (he strongly disapproved of the March!). Tchaikovsky himself held the First Suite in very high esteem and placed it alongside the Fourth Symphony, the Violin Concerto, the Capriccio Italienne, the Serenade for Strings, and the 1812 Overture on his foreign tours. If latter-day concert-goers are less likely to find the Suite on today's programs, this is not to deny that the future composer of the Nutcracker Suite lurks in embryo within its pages.

Bradford Robinson, 2004

For performance material, please contact Forberg & Jurgenson, Bonn. Reprint of a copy from the Musikbibliothek der Münchener Stadtbibliothek, Munich.