THE FLORIDA ORCHESTRA | 2017-2018 Program Notes PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY SYMPHONY NO. 2 IN C MINOR, OP. 17, “LITTLE RUSSIAN” Duration: ca. 33 minutes Overview Looking back through the mists of over a century to the closing decades of Imperial Russia, it might at first seem that an unwavering unanimity joined together the music from Glinka through Borodin, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky to Scriabin and Rachmaninoff. Upon closer examination of the lives and philosophies of these men, however, bitter enmities are revealed. The group of musical nationalists known in the West as “The Five” — Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov — were all originally amateur musicians determined to establish a distinctly Russian school of composition based on native folk and church music, history and lore. In this, they followed the lead of Mikhail Glinka, revered as the father of Russian concert music. They belligerently defended their untutored status on the basis that their lack of formal training freed them from German musical hegemony, and allowed them to penetrate more directly into the heart of the Russian ethos. They looked upon the Russian graduates of the leading conservatories almost as traitors to the nationalistic cause they espoused, and Tchaikovsky was among their favored targets. For his part, the well-trained Tchaikovsky could hardly help but look down on the rough-hewn music of The Five. He once castigated Mussorgsky’s work in a letter to his brother Modeste as “the lowest, commonest parody of music; it may go to the devil for all I care.” Still, there was inevitably frequent contact between these two factions, and eventually a laissez-faire understanding was achieved. Rimsky-Korsakov decided to forsake the ranks of the uneducated, and he taught himself the techniques of music well enough to eventually become Russia’s most respected pedagogue, numbering Stravinsky and Respighi among his students. Tchaikovsky, though critical of their lack of professionalism, always respected the raw talent of the little group of nationalists, and he even agreed with their ideal of fostering Russian music. Like them, he felt drawn to the native traditions of his homeland, and once wrote to his benefactress, Mme. von Meck, “As regards the Russian element in general in my music (i.e., the instances of melody and harmony originating in folksong), I grew up in the backwoods, saturating myself from earliest childhood with the inexplicable beauty of the characteristic traits of Russian folksong.” Unlike The Five, however, who felt that a free fantasia form could best express their ideas, Tchaikovsky believed that the Russian influence should be channeled into the traditional, Classical form of the symphony. It is not hard to understand, therefore, why Tchaikovsky was the first Russian composer widely appreciated in the Western world, whose tastes had so long been dominated by German music. Despite their underlying differences, there were at least two significant instances in Tchaikovsky’s early life when he was musically drawn to The Five. One was when Balakirev suggested the topic and even the structure for his 1869 tone poem, Romeo and Juliet. Another was in this Second Symphony. After an exhausting year of teaching, composing and writing music criticism in Moscow, Tchaikovsky visited his beloved sister, Alexandra, in Kamenka in Ukraine in June 1872. He was refreshed during the summer months not only by the time spent with his family, but also by the chance to return to the country and its people. Among the things he enjoyed most was hearing the peasants sing, and it may have been this rustic music that inspired the Second Symphony, just as it did many of the works of The Five. It was Tchaikovsky’s use in this Symphony of three folk tunes that he may have heard in Kamenka that caused the work to be nicknamed “Little Russian” by the critic Nikolai Kashkin in 1896. The diminutive referred not to any characteristic of the work but rather to the Ukrainian region from which Tchaikovsky borrowed his themes, known in Tsarist days as “Little Russia.” What To Listen For The Symphony’s first movement is prefaced by a slow introduction based on a variant of the traditional Russian song Down by Mother Volga. The body of the movement’s sonata form begins with a quickening of the tempo and the presentation of the main theme, a vigorous, stormy strain; the lyrical second theme is presented by the clarinet. In the energetic development section these two melodies are intertwined with the folk tune from the introduction. A massive climax ends the development and leads into the recapitulation of the stormy main theme and the yearning complementary melody. The closing pages contain a quiet reminder of Down by Mother Volga from the horn and bassoon. The second movement was taken whole from Undine, Tchaikovsky’s unsuccessful opera of 1869. In the opera, this music was used as a wedding march and in the Symphony it takes the place of the slow movement. The center of this three-part movement (A–B–A) is a treatment 49
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