Leonard Bernstein · New York Philharmonic Orchestra
- Dreams of a Winter Journey. Allegro tranquillo (G minor)
- Land of Desolation, Land of Mists. Adagio cantabile ma non tanto (E-flat major)
- Scherzo. Allegro scherzando giocoso (C minor)
- Finale. Andante lugubre – Allegro maestoso (G minor → G major)
Instruments:
- 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in A, Bb), 2 bassoons
- 4 horns (in Eb, F), 2 trumpets (in C, D), 3 trombones, tuba
- 2 timpani, cymbals, bass drum
- strings
1st Movement:
Dreams of a Winter Journey. Allegro tranquillo (G minor): I don’t want to say anything about form in this. It is basically sonata form, no intro, but freer in form and harder to quickly sum up. But for me the most obvious thing is the lightness and grace that reminds me, of all people, Mendelssohn. However, it has a strongly Russian feel and from the very beginning you know that it is Tchaikovsky. Although it is in minor, much of it is surprisingly transparent, certainly dreamlike and full of late 19th century Romanticism.
2nd Movement:
Land of Desolation, Land of Mists. Adagio cantabile ma non tanto (E-flat major): This movement has a single dominating theme, and it is very obviously Russian in sound and feel. In moving to Eb he morphs. Gm moves to Eb by moving one note, D to Eb, a single morph that is as smooth as butter.
3rd Movement:
Scherzo. Allegro scherzando giocoso (C minor): This was the earliest movement to be written. It is for the most part the third movement of a piano sonata that he had written as a student, transposed down from C# minor to C minor, then the trio is replaced with a waltz. Anyone who is well acquainted with the music of Mendelssohn will again hear his influence here. Tchaikovsky loved his music.
4th Movement:
Finale. Andante lugubre – Allegro maestoso (G minor → G major): Tchaikovsky uses a folk-song as the basis for both the introduction and the second subject (in B minor), then uses another one as the 2nd subject. Then in the recap the movement’s introduction repeats instead of secondary theme, following a development section that has a mildly fugal sound. There is such fugal sound also in the recap, followed by another development. It has very powerful, upbeat ending to conclude that begins very quietly and slowly, then builds and builds. At this point Tchaikovsky has stretched the whole idea of sonata form so far that his contemporaries did not understand what he was doing. Today we know it is pure genius.
Composed in 1866…
Tchaikovsky wrote his Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op. 13, in 1866. He was only 26 at the time. Many years later he continued to think it was one of the best things he wrote, although he felt that it was in many ways still immature. But why did he feel the need to say that? The answer is older musicians, whom he admired and trusted, sabotaged him at every point.
Nikolai Rubinstein…
There is a saying I grew up what says: “With a friend like you who needs enemies!” If you read about the life of Tchaikovsky, you will find that often Nikolai Rubinstein is described as a friend. Yet this man, a teacher and five years older that Tchaikovsky, was one of the most negative influences his life and perhaps would have been easier to avoid if he had been an outright enemy. Tchaikovsky worked on this symphony, his first, with such effort that the effort nearly caused him a mental breakdown.
He was told the symphony was no good and had to be “fixed”…
When Tchaikovsky sought the opinion of his former teachers, Anton Rubinstein and Nikolai Zaremba, both men were unbelievably negative, refusing to perform any of the symphony, and both demanded modifications as a condition for reconsidering the work. In all of music there is no better example of very stupid, backward people nearly destroying the work of genius, and Tchaikovsky faced similar stupidity throughout his life.
There was no pleasing his teachers…
When when Tchaikovsky resubmitted the manuscript to Rubinstein and Zaremba with their insisted changes, they still disapproved of the symphony on the whole.
In the end he discarded all the revisions they had demanded with the exception of one change that was necessary because he destroyed pat of his own music in depression. In the attempt to please these idiots he had discarded the papers that contained his original second subject, and he could not remember exactly what he had originally composed. So he had to let the second subject, as approved by Zaremba, stand as it was.
Again, mental and creative midgets tried to destroy the creation of a genius…
Today we know that Rubinstein was such a minor composer, most people would be hard pressed to name anything he wrote. Zaremba did not even compose. So this is the kind of extreme very average human beings can have on creative geniuses.
Even after a surprisingly successful performance, it took the symphony 15 more years for its next performance in 1883.
Struggles with form…
In fact, Tchaikovsky had no trouble with form. He had trouble trying to make himself follow traditional rules, and Anton Rubinstein was a slavish follower of those rules in his own works.
He could only write a symphony that would please Rubinstein by staying firmly within a classical format, denying himself the freedom to stay true to his own strengths as a composer.
Anton Rubinstein and his followers remained hostile to new trends in music.