Grande Sonate in G major Op.37

December (Christmas): tempo di valse

The best of Tchaikovsky’s solo piano music - neither the most original nor the most ambitious but the most idiomatic - is to be found in The Seasons. Commissioned to provide a seasonally flavoured piece for each month of the year 1876 by the St Petersburg periodical Nouvelliste, the composer was so confident that he could dash off something appropriate at the last minute that he asked his servant to remind him on the day the next instalment was due. “Pyotr Ilyich, it’s time to send off to St Petersburg” was his cue to start on a piece he would complete in a single setting.

Off-hand though his attitude might have been, it at least preserved him from the labouriousness of parts of his Grande Sonate in G major Op.37 and it did necessitate a certain spontaneity, even if it also caused him to echo the keyboard style of other composers from time to time. The nostalgic melodic line and D minor harmonies of the opening theme of October are distinctive Tchaikovsky and, while much of the figuration recalls Chopin, the duet between the two hands is both touchingly and skillfully accomplished. November, with its Russian dance middle section and its jingling bells, is one of the more original conceptions and December, with its rhythmically diffident waltz tune, one of the most captivating.

December (Christmas): tempo di valse

“Our celebrated composer P.I. Tchaikovsky has promised his collaboration with the Nouvelliste and is preparing to publish next year a series of piano pieces written specially for our magazine – pieces which will correspond in title and character with the month in which they are published.” The editor of the St. Petersburg music periodical in which that notice appeared in December 1875 was clearly proud of the arrangement. Tchaikovsky didn’t take it quite so seriously. Confident that he could dash off something appropriate at the last minute, he asked his servant to remind him on the day of the month the next instalment was due. “Pyotr Ilyich, it’s time to send off to St Petersburg” was his cue to start on a piece he would complete in a single setting.     

Off-hand though his attitude might have been, it at least preserved him from the laboriousness of parts of the Piano Sonata in G major he was to write two years later. In the tight situation he had imposed on himself there was no time for profundity, complexity or anything that did not fall easily under the fingers – which is one reason why the best of his solo piano music, neither the most original nor the most ambitious but the most idiomatic, is to be found in the The Seasons. If he needed a model to help him out from time to time, at least he had the good taste to turn, as often as not, to Robert Schumann. The wistful opening of January might recall something of the atmosphere of Kinderszenen, but the middle section, which repeatedly anticipates an expressive phrase from Tatyana’s letter aria in Eugene Onegin, is pure Tchaikovsky. Like the other subtitles, “By the Fireside,” which seems only vaguely relevant to the music, derives not from the composer but from the verse motto chosen for the month by the editor of the Nouvelliste.

Tchaikovsky was happy, however, with the “Carnival” motto for February

since it coincided with his liking for vigorous Russian dance. The “Song of the Lark” title attached to March is reflected in the exquisitely decorated middle section of what, in other circumstances, he might well have called a nocturne. In April, at a loss perhaps for music appropriate to a “Snowdrop,” he indulged himself in a salon-style waltz thinly but attractively disguised in 6/8 time. The serenity of the “White Nights” of May is offset by a more agitated, Schumannesque middle section. “Barcarolle” is a title appropriate neither to the June motto – although it does refer to “the shore where the waves will kiss our feet” – nor to Tchaikovsky’s melodious and characteristically melancholy song without words, still less the syncopated rhythms and noisy crescendo that interrupt it.

If “The Reaper’s Song” in July seems excessively plain to begin with, it gives way at an early stage to an increasingly lively dance and is then recalled in compensatingly seductive harmonies and piano figuration. Whatever relation it might have to “The Harvest,” August –    a rhythmically ingenious scherzo with a contrastingly chorale-like middle section – is perhaps the most inspired piece in the set. No such claim can be made for September, conscientious though it is in evoking the “resounding horns” of the Pushkin “Hunt” motto that goes with it. In October, on the other hand, Tolstoy’s vision of rain falling on yellowed leaves evoked an “Autumn Song” with a sadly drooping melodic line and a sustained exchange of expressive intimacies between left hand and right.

Although there is no sign of the troika at the beginning of November, sleigh bells jingle in the Russian-dance middle section and go on jingling as the opening theme is recalled in bright new colours. “Christmas,” however, is celebrated indoors – by way of a waltz with a charmingly pretty tune and captivatingly diffident rhythms which, somewhat against its nature, briefly asserts itself in a coda appropriate to the last month of the year.           

The Piano Sonata in G major is one of those Tchaikovsky scores, like the Second Piano Concerto in the same key, which need an inspired performer to reveal their true qualities. Unlike the Second Piano Concerto, the Sonata had the good fortune of an evidently magnificent first performance by Nikolay Rubinstein, who immediately engaged public enthusiasm for it. As for Tchaikovsky, who was not present on that occasion in Moscow in 1879, he was thrilled when Rubinstein played it for him in private, giving an enormously encouraging account of a work that even the composer considered “somewhat dry and complicated.” Indeed, it was because of Rubinstein’s success with the Sonata that Tchaikovsky wrote the Second Piano Concerto for him. Unfortunately, the dedicatee died before he could perform it.

Tchaikovsky’s models when writing the “Grande Sonate,” as he called it, were clearly Schumann and Chopin - just as they were when he wrote his student Sonata in C sharp minor twelve years earlier. If the Sonata in G sometimes seems to lack the spontaneously romantic impulse of its models, it could be at least partly because his emotional commitment at the time was consumed by the Violin Concerto in D, which seriously distracted him from the piano piece. Whatever its faults, however, the Sonata is neither “dry” nor unduly “complicated”.

The rotundly harmonised theme that opens the work is dynamic rather than academic and, since it is reluctant to relax its vice-like grip, it imparts much of its Schumannesque heroism to the first movement in general. Even so, there is a fairly early change of texture when a variant of the main theme is presented over rolling arpeggios and in a new, dancing rhythm. After a return of the opening theme in its original form, there is another, more radical change of texture: this is to make way for the nostalgic second subject, which retains its poetry in spite of echoes of earlier material cleverly infiltrated alongside it. Both main themes are featured in the development but, with its huge feats of bravado, the heroic first subject dominates the proceedings. It is even more conspicuous when, after a full-scale recapitulation, it motivates an extended coda with an impressively sonorous tolling of bells in the closing bars.

The Andante non troppo is a very much more intimate conception. The one sustained application of the kind of chordal bulk associated with the first movement comes towards the end, just before the last recall of the two main themes. It is a sad outcome to the emotional scenario up to that point. The opening theme of the movement has a Chopinesque melancholy and the dramatic episode that follows is no more cheerful. On the other hand, the slightly quicker contrasting section - introduced by way of a pause and a lingering transition - has a happy innocence that could, with any luck, prevail. The main theme is indeed persuaded to open itself out to more radiant harmonies at one point. But, after an extended and violent recall of the dramatic episode, it finally returns to its initial melancholy, its once happy companion quietly sharing its despondency at the end.

By common consent the Scherzo is the most successful movement of the four. It is highly ingenious both rhythmically, with its constantly shifting accents, and texturally, with its witty exchanges between the two hands. Structurally, with a middle section registering a clear change of mood while retaining many of the rhythmic and textural features of the outer sections, it is no less resourceful. As entertaining as the Schumann scherzo movements it emulates, it is one of the best of all examples of Tchaikovsky’s piano writing.

The arresting main theme of the rondo Finale is in two parts - energetically syncopated fistfuls of chords rising in the right hand and simultaneously falling in the left, followed by a dynamic exchange of ideas bouncing from hand to hand. Reappearing three times, always with both parts intact, this double theme alternates with two well-contrasted less pressurised episodes. Of the two, the first - which recalls the pizzicato scherzo of the recent Fourth Symphony - is the more entertaining but the less significant. It is the second episode, based on an expressive melody first presented in octaves and then extended in a variety of keyboard textures, that is awarded the distinction of being recalled after the last appearance of the main theme. It ends the work thoughtfully and, until the emphatic assertion of the closing bars, on a dying fall.