Symphony No.3

By the early 1870s, the young PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY had already established his name as a recognized significant artistic figure in Moscow musical life. The premieres of his first two symphonies, the operas "Voyevoda", "Undina", "Oprichnik" and " Vakula the Smith" (later reworked with a new title "Cherevichki"), the music to Ostrovsky's drama The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka) passed with great success, the ballet Swan Lake, the Piano Concerto No. 1, the orchestral fantasias Romeo and Juliet and Francesca da Rimini, the Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra, the three string quartets, etc. He became the first professor of composition at the Moscow Conservatoire, founded in 1866, wrote articles as a music critic in the newspaper Russkie Vedomosti, often for productions abroad, translated music-theoretical works from French and German for the needs of pedagogical practice, and wrote textbooks himself. He was also received with interest and approval by the Petersburg composers of the "Mighty Five", despite their differences in their artistic views. Tchaikovsky created his SYMPHONY No 3, like the previous two, in the peaceful summer vacation days spent in the country, away from his busy life in Moscow. From mid-June to mid-August 1875 he was visiting friends and relatives in various places, but he spent most of his time in Usovo at the estate of his student and close friend Count Vladimir Stepanovich Shilovsky, an amateur composer, poet and librettist. There he sketched the entire symphony in three weeks and began its orchestration. Several short trips to Moscow, Kyiv and other places interrupted his work, however, and it was not until August in the village of Verbovka that he finally completed the symphony, dedicating it to V. St. Shilovsky (the two keyboard pieces Nocturne and Humoresque, Op. 10 are also dedicated to him). It was premiered on 7 November 1875 in Moscow, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein, at the first concert of the Russian Musical Society. The audience received it very well, but Tchaikovsky himself was not entirely satisfied and wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov: 'It seems to me that the symphony does not present any particularly successful ideas, but technically it is a step forward. Above all, I am pleased with the first movement and the two scherzos'. In January 1876 the new work was performed successfully in St. Petersburg under the baton of the Mariinsky's music director, Eduard Napravnik. Among the excellent reviews in the press was that of the influential German Laroche: "With the strength of its content, the varied richness of its form, the nobility of its style, reflecting a distinctive, individual creativity, and the rare perfection of its technique, Tchaikovsky's symphony is one of the capital phenomena in the music of recent years..." On October 3^rd 1878 the Symphony No. 3 was performed under the baton of Hans Richter with the Vienna Philharmonic, on February 8^th, 1879 at a concert of the Philharmonic Society in New York, and then at the Crystal Palace in London. Yet the Symphony No.3 remains the least frequently performed of Tchaikovsky's six completed symphonies and is quite distinctive. It is the only one in a major key, without Russian inflections in the melody, with more restrained romantic emotion, and in five movements rather than the traditional four of the symphonic cycle. Its symmetrical construction is unusual - the central movement is an elegiac slow third, flanked by scherzos on either side, framed overall by the dynamic extended outer movements. The imagery of each movement is also unusual - a mournful march at the very beginning that seems to carry a hidden narrative, a waltz-like second movement Alla tedesca ('in the German style') whose 'balletic' gesture prefigures the Swan Lake created a few months later. The Scherzo that follows also features musical material from the cantata In Memory of the Bicentenary of the Birth of Peter the Great, composed by Tchaikovsky in 1872. The Finale in Tempo di polacca, built in the rhythm typical of polonaise, has given rise to this symphony sometimes being called "Polish".