Souvenir de Florence, Op.70
Allegro con spirito
Adagio cantabile e con moto
Allegretto moderato
Allegro vivace
Compared to his orchestral output, Tchaikovsky’s chamber works are few in number; three string quartets, the A minor Piano Trio and this string sextet. This is no surprise. Most Russian music of this period derived from Glinka’s example, rooted in melody, instrumental colour, and striking contrasts – an idiom which the infinitely varied resources of the orchestra could best serve. Although chamber music was developing – particularly in the circle of composers around the St Petersburg publisher Mitrofan Beliaev – the tendency was still towards experiments and miniatures. Only a handful of full-scale chamber works from this period had truly made an impact; Tchaikovsky’s own First Quartet (1871), Borodin’s two Quartets (1879 and 1885) and, at a pinch, the young Glazunov’s First Quartet. (1882). There was little in 19th Century Russian musical culture to prepare Tchaikovsky for a kind of music which unfolded as an extensive musical argument through the intimate interaction of a small group of solo players. Yet in true classical chamber music there was no evading such music, and so there was little alternative for him but to turn to the western-European (and above all, Austro-German) tradition and find an accommodation between this and his own creative impulses.
Tchaikovsky’s chamber works are a record of one man’s extraordinarily resourceful answer to this daunting challenge, and the Souvenir de Florence is his final, perhaps most completely integrated, synthesis of Russian inspiration with a fundamentally German model. The base of chamber music in Imperial Russia was societies in the big cities, and not surprisingly the core of their memberships was drawn from the large expatriate German communities in each. In 1886 the St. Petersburg Chamber Music Society had elected Tchaikovsky an honorary member, and in response he had promised to compose and dedicate a piece to them. Four years later he redeemed his promise with this sextet.
The decision to use six rather than four stringed instruments was Tchaikovsky’s own, taken because it would increase the range of textural and colour options. He took full advantage of the possibilities open to him. The work is richly scored throughout and employs the full range of instrumental colours available in a string sextet – his use of harmonics, double-stops, open strings and spiccato bowing shows that he’d learned from the composers of the Beliaev circle. The Souvenir is sometimes performed in a version for string orchestra, as a sort of Italianate Serenade for Strings, but the part-writing is so masterly that it is perfectly effective – and wonderfully larger-than-life – in its original form. The opening is splendidly dramatic and springs instantly into life – but note, after the surge has abated, the discriminating variety with which Tchaikovsky is already exploiting the possibilities of the medium in his huge and richly-inspired second group. Both this movement and the finale are rigorous but imaginative sonata structures, and their form is as clear as in any such movements in Tchaikovsky’s output. But it is in the more relaxed central movements, where pure melody could come into its own, that the composer’s personal voice is most persuasively heard. Tchaikovsky had noted down the main theme of the slow movement in Florence in 1887, and so this ravishingly-scored serenade for the first violin and first ‘cello gave the sextet its name. Whatever its Italian character, this melody is quintessential Tchaikovsky; so, in its different way is the third movement – a dance-like scherzo built on a very Russian–sounding first theme. The brief central section is actually faster than the outer sections of the movement, and contains some of Tchaikovsky’s most colourful instrumental effects. A Russian character persists into the first theme of the finale, although the dancing rhythms that accompany it evokes such similar forays into the Italian idiom as the Neapolitan Dance from "The Nutcracker" and the Capriccio Italien. But for an audience that would contain a high proportion of Western listeners some pointed demonstrations of contrapuntal expertise would not come amiss, and Tchaikovsky provides two such sections, the second a full-blown fugue, as well as a soaring lyrical tune for the second subject-group. The movement is high-spirited and energetic from beginning to end, closing with a brilliant coda which pushes the technical possibilities of the sextet form to their absolute limit.
Adapted by R. G. Bratby
from a note by David Brown
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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