Read the very first opus, the Russian Scherzo in B flat, and you encounter a style that is decidedly orchestral. Massive octave and chord work, with dangerous skips and a general disregard for the well-sounding. In nearly all of his piano music I find this striving for the expression of the idea at the expense of smooth delivery, and we who have outlived the technical opportunism of the school that shuddered at the placing of the thumb on a black key must of necessity defend this course; but I wish to say for the benefit of those who groan over Brahms that he is a veritable Chopin compared to Tschaïkowsky—a veritable Chopin in his feeling for the right word and the right mechanical placing of it. Tschaïkowsky’s writing for piano is that of the composer for orchestra. He thinks orchestrally, and his position as a technician might be placed midway between Schumann and Liszt. Beethoven, employing the technics nearest at hand—the Clementi technics—writes more idiomatically for the instrument than this latter-day Russian master. Hence the general indifference to his music manifested by pianists; hence the rareness of his name on concert programmes, for the whole tribe of pianists is sheep-like in its aversion to a new pasture, and only after the leader has leaped the gap in the hedge does it timidly follow and sniff at novel herbage.
For teaching purposes the pedagogue encounters a genuine bar in Tschaïkowsky’s smaller pieces. After a page of delightful and facile writing, a flock of double notes or a nasty patch of octaves appear, and sometimes the teacher is himself floored by the difficulties. You may count on one hand the popular piano compositions of a small genre—the song without words, a real serenata, if ever there was one, with a streak of dark pathos in the middle; the number called June, from the Seasons, in the key of G minor, a barcarolle hinting of Mendelssohn and a stepfather to Moriz Moszkowski’s barcarolle; the theme and variations from op. 19, a scherzo in F from Souvenir de Hapsal, and the Album d’Enfants, op. 39.
I shall not consider in detail all the piano orchestral or lyric works of Tschaïkowsky, but only the typical ones, and, furthermore, I urge pianists who are clamoring for a novel repertory to study and search for themselves and not be deterred by the absence of stereotyped forms of passage work, for, while Tschaïkowsky is never a path-breaker in this respect, his piano music is not always cast in an acceptable mould.
I have mentioned op. 1, No. 1, as being a Scherzo à la Russe; the second number an Impromptu. The little scherzo in F from op. 2 is tricky and full of vitality.
It is not difficult. The second theme is very pretty. This op. 2 also contains “Ruines d’un Château,” and the familiar song without words, op. 3—you see, I am in deadly earnest and mean to give you the story to its bitter end—is the opera Voyevode. Op. 4 is Valse Caprice, for piano in A flat, very brilliant; op. 5, the piano Romance much played by Rubinstein; op. 6 is composed of six romances for voice; op. 7 is a piano Valse-Scherzo, also played by Rubinstein; op. 8, a Capriccio for piano in G flat; op. 9, three piano pieces—a Reverie, a Polka and a Mazourka; op. 10, two piano pieces—a Nocturne in B and a Humoresque; op. 11, the famous string quartet, E flat, with its entrancing slow movement; op. 12, an opera rejoicing in the felicitous title of Snegourotschka, or La Fille de Neige, a lyric drama in three acts. It was damned by Russian critics. Op. 13—at last we come to a symphony, the first in G minor, sometimes called A Winter’s Journey. It has been played here.
The work took shape under Rubinstein’s eyes and has an antiquated flavor. It was composed in 1868 when Tschaïkowsky taught at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. If it were not for the last movement, which has a smack of the Calmuck, and the modern instrumentation, I should say that Mendelssohn had more to do with this youthful composition than Rubinstein. There is the same saccharine volubility, the same saccharine cantabile and the same damnable fluency that characterizes the work of the feline Felix. Of the poet that penned those masterpieces, Francesca, Hamlet and Roméo et Juliette there is not the faintest spoor.
The symphony is monotonously in the key of G minor, with the exception of the adagio. It is called A Winter Journey, and the slush must have been ankle-deep. The first two movements are labelled, Winter Journey Dreams and Foggy Landscape, which of course may mean anything or nothing. The Allegro tranquillo is smooth, even smug, and one entire phrase for the woodwind occurs in the working-out section of the first movement of Rubinstein’s D minor piano concerto. The adagio is well made but is not musically convincing, notwithstanding its dark, rustling introduction, and the pretty conversation between oboe and flute. When the ’celli take up the solo one feels as if something were being accomplished. The scherzo is a melancholy apology and the trio cheap. In the finale, noisy and barbaric, we get a taste of our Tschaïkowsky, despite the garishness of loosely built fabric. The work is promising but we miss the large sweep, the poetic, passionate intensity, the keen note of naturalism and the fine intellectual acidity which we look for in this great composer.
Oddly enough it was Tschaïkowsky’s favorite as is evidenced by the following communication from Mr. E. Francis Hyde the president of the New York Philharmonic Society: “When Tschaïkowsky was in this country in the spring of 1891 I used frequently to see and converse with him about musical matters. One evening when he was at my house, I had taken from my library the scores of his second, third, fourth and fifth symphonies and narrated to him the times of their first production in this country, and the circumstances connected with their performance. I then asked him which one of all his symphonies he liked the best, naturally supposing he would mention one of those lying before us. To my surprise however, he replied that he liked his first symphony best of all. He said that it was the first expression of his feelings in a large composition of purely orchestral form, and he had a peculiar affection for his first born. He did not enter into any details regarding its subject-matter but he expressed a hope that it would soon be produced in this country.”
Tschaïkowsky may have been indulging in a little sentimental cynicism. Op. 14 is an opera, Vakoula, The Smith, in three acts; op. 15 is the Ouverture Triomphale; op. 16 comprises six romances for voice with piano; op. 17 the second symphony in C minor and known as the Russian.
In it Tschaïkowsky begins to reveal his skill in orchestration, and the themes of the first movement are all strong; at least two of its movements are not symphonic in character. The first allegro, the strongest, is very Russian in thematic quality. The entire movement is characterized by a bizarre freedom, even recklessness. But there can be no doubt about the skill of its maker. The fantastic Durchführungsatz and the melancholy beauty of the opening—and very Slavic theme—are intimations of the greater Tschaïkowsky who came later.