Andante and Finale (Tchaikovsky)
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Tchaikovsky's Andante and Finale for piano and orchestra were initially intended as the slow movement and finale of the Symphony in E-flat, a work he started in 1892 but eventually abandoned. Tchaikovsky began reworking the sketches for these two movements into the the second and third movements of a piano concerto he promised to French pianist Louis Diémer. The composer finished the first movement of this concerto, then decided to leave the work as a single-movement Allegro de concert.
Despite his stated intentions, Tchaikovsky had written "End of movement 1" on the last page of the Allegro brilliante that would be published by Jurgenson as the Third Piano Concerto. Was not crossing out this comment simply an oversight on Tchaikovsky's part? Had Tchaikovsky actually changed his mind and decided to continue work? Was he thinking about continuing work in case Diémer would prefer a full-length piece? Would he have used the two movements he had discarded previously or would he have written something new?
All this became pure conjecture upon Tchaikovsky's death. At that time, what could have appeared to some to be the second and third movements were left in sketch form. Music writer Eric Blom reminds us that Tchaikovsky left "no indication that they too were to be turned into concerto form. Since they originally formed part of the same work, it seemed reasonable, however, to assume that this was his intention[1]."
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[edit] Symphony or Concerto -- Again
After his brother's death, Modest Tchaikovsky asked the composer's friend and former student Sergey Taneyev to go through the sketches of compositions left unfinished. In November 1894, Taneyev began to study the unfinished sketches of these two movements. He wrote Modest, "I have copied out from Petr Il’ich’s notebooks sketches for two movements of a future piano piece. To start with I made a clean copy, and then began to orchestrate them. The Andante is delightful, but unfortunately Petr Ilich did not leave it for orchestra, but arranged it as a piano piece[2]."
The work that followed evidently took considerable time. Both Taneyev and Modest questioned how the work should be published -- whether to return to the author’s original 1892 intention and complete them as two orchestral movements for a symphony or to preserve its subsequent arrangement and complete reworking them as a piece for piano and orchestra[3].
Evidently, Taneyev and Modest decided initially to follow a purely orchestral course, as another friend of the late composer, pianist Alexander Ziloti, wrote Modest in April 1895, "It's a great pity that the Andante and Allegro will not be published for the piano[4]."
While Tchaikovsky was still alive, a letter from his nephew Vladimir "Bob" Davidiv had dissuaded him from abandoning his sketches for a proposed Symphony in E flat. The sketches for the first movement of that work eventually became what was published as the Third Piano Concerto. Now history repeated itself, in the guise of Ziloti's letter, at an equally crucial moment.
Whether Ziloti influenced them with his comments or Taneyev amd Modest reconsidered purely on their own, Taneyev reworked the pieces into concerto form. On August 24, 1895, he reported to Modest that he was "finishing my task of orchestrating Petr Il’ich’s piano compositions. On my arrival in Moscow I will add the finishing touches and hand the full score over to you[5]." However, the reworking of the full score was delayed[6]. In a letter of 24 February 1896, Taneyev promised Modest that "it will shortly be put in order[7]."
There was also the question of where and how these two movements would be publshed. This was complicated by the fact that Jurgenson had already published the opening movement of the concerto as a separate composition. Modest and Taneyev eventually offered the Andante and Finale to M.P. Beliaiev, together with the overtures Fatum, The Storm and The Voevoda.
In letters from Beliaiev to Taneyev, the question of how to publish the Andante and Finale was once again raised. Beliaev wrote, "You suggested these two movements should be published as an orchestral work ... but it seems to me that can be done later; just now I want to have all the materials so that there will be no interruption to the process of publication[8]."
Beliaiev again raised the matter in a letter dated April 27: "I have a related question: how ought I to print the two unpublished movements of Petr Il’ich’s piano concerto, given that Jurgenson has already published the first movement? They can hardly be called two abandoned movements from the concerto! But could they be published as an independent work, i.e. as a fourth concerto in two movements, or as two concert pieces? Or would it not be better to publish them only in orchestral form as two movements from an unfinished symphony?[9]."
Eventually, Beliaiev published the Andante and Finale in 1897 in Taneyev’s version for piano and orchestra, as an independent but related composition to the concerto and with a separate opus number (Op. 79, as opposed to Op. 75 for the movement published by Jurgenson). The first performance took place on February 8, 1897 in St. Petersburg with Taneyev as soloist.
On October 17, 1898, Taneyev repeated the Andante and Finale at one of Beliaiev's Russian symphony concerts in Moscow, conducted by Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov. For this concert Taneyev made some changes to the piano part: "I have preserved everything that was Petr Il’ich’s, but made it more interesting for the pianist, and it seems to me that the concerto will be more successful in this form[10]".
[edit] Structure
As stated at the beginning of this entry, whether Tchaikovsky would have kept the Andante and Finale or written new music to make the Third Piano Concerto a three-movement work after all is purely conjecture. Accepting Opp. 75 and 79 as a complete concerto within Tchaikovsky's intentions, Tchaikovsky scholar and author John Warrack maintains, could be a misnomer. "[W]hat survives is a reconstruction in concerto form of some music Tchaikovsky was planning, not a genuine Tchaikovsky piano concerto[11]."
Blom adds, "It is true that even Taneev [sic] did not know for certain whether Tchaikovsky, if he actually meant to turn out a three-movement concerto, would not have preferred to scrap the andante and finale altogether and to replace them by two entirely new movements; so if we decide that the finale at any rate is a poor piece of work, we must blame Taneev [sic] for preserving it rather than Tchaikovsky for having conceived it. For we cannot even be sure how far the conception may have been carried out ...[12]."
[edit] Andante
Warrack writes, "Taneyev ... reduced the scoring of the 'andante' to woodwinds, horns and strings, reserving the return of the full orchestra for the finale -- an intelligent plan, carried off with a plan for Tchaikovskian scoring that at times veers toward parody ... The 'andante' is a simple song-like movement, with a dialogue introduced in the central section between cello solo and piano that is handled in a very convincing Tchaikovskian vein. Writer Eric Blom maintins this dialogue of cello and piano, while calling it "ingenious" in idea, mainly "enhance[s] the effect of a tune at the very moment when its repetition might possibly become tiresome -- in this case at the return of the main theme ...[13]."
Blom adds that this movement is "developed in Tchaikovsky's characteristic manner, which includes a great deal of pianistic embroidery of some technical interest but no particular thematic significance ...[14]." Blom comments on the solo part, "For a concerto the keyboard writing here is not out-of-the-way difficult, but it shows how intimately Taneev [sic] understood the peculiar Tchaikovskian way of pianistic treatment, even to its faults, which are thickness of texture (too many fistfuls of chords and too many octave doublings) and sometimes long stretches of repetition of accompaniment figures. As a symphonic movement this andante would have been rather mild and uneventful, but it does well enough for a concerto because the opposition of the solo instrument and the orchestra adds a certain tension and variety to it[15]."
[edit] Finale
"The ['andante'] is far more successful than the finale," Warrack comments, "a quasi-martial 'allegro maestoso' that could scarcely have been the summing-up of a symphony and does little in this role for a concerto[16]." Blom elaborates, "It has energy in abundance -- indeed, over-abundance -- but no real vitality of invention. The material is dry and dead, nor does the extremely busy and strenously athletic piano-part give any real life to it. There is plenty of bustle and very little enterprise[17]."
Blom continues, "The movement, which pounds away relentlessly, is mercifully short; but although that is an advantage because the quality of the music happens to be such that a little of it is all the better for not going a long way, it is impossible to feel that Tchaikovsky would have been content with no more than that for the crowning movement of a symphony.... The very opening, for instance, does not give the impression of a first presentation of a theme so much as a development of it as it would appear in a working-out section....
"A second theme, in G major, is very feeble, and the twiddling little figures that accompany it on the piano, whether by Tchaikovsky ot Taneev [sic], are nothing for either for them to be proud of, or for the pianist to enjoy, for they have not even the attraction of difficulty. Yet another theme, in C major,... spells sheer bankruptcy of invention; and the very arid two-part writing in octaves for the orchestra that soon follows is not enlivened by the pianist's scale passages, which rush up and down fussily without adding the least interest in the musical goings-on. The second subject eventually returns in the tonic key, wrapped up in thick wads of arpeggios as though it were a precious object to be saved from breakage. Unfortunately it is nothing of the kind, and the presto peoration does not redeem a movement that can only be written down as one of Tchaikovsky's most lamentable failures. Yet we are bound to remember that he must have known that, since he never intended it to be published[18]."
Warrack concludes, "The kindest response is to remember that Tchaikovsky himself abandoned it. Taneyev was being over-pious: much the best solution of the problem of what to do with the music is to perform the Third Concerto as Tchaikovsky left it, in one movement; it could with advantage be heard sometimes in concerts at which soloists wish to add something less than another full-scale concerto to the main work in their program[19]."
[edit] References
[edit] Books
- ed. Abraham, Gerals, Music of Tchaikovsky (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1946)
- Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Final Years (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992)
- Hanson, Lawrence and Elisabeth, Tchaikovsky: The Man Behind the Music (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company)
- Poznansky, Alexander, Tchaikovsky's Last Days (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
- Poznansky, Alexander Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man (New York: Schirmer Books, 1991),
- Poznansky, Alexander. Tchaikovsky Through Others' Eyes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999)
- Schonberg, Harold C., The Great Pianists
- Warrack, John, Tchaikovsky Symphonies and Concertos (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969)
