Méditation from Souvenir d’un lieu cher, Op.42

The “dear place” to which Tchaikovsky dedicated his Souvenir d’un lieu cher was Brailovo, the Ukraine estate of the composer’s benefactor Nadezhda von Meck. After staying in solitary splendour in Nadezhda’s “enchanted castle” for a couple of weeks in the spring of 1878    – she was in Moscow at the time – he left the manuscript of three violin pieces for his patron to find on her return. The first of them, which he now called Méditation, was written originally for the Violin Concerto in D major and then discarded as being out of keeping with the rest of the work. If it is not of the same elevated quality as the Canzonetta which replaces it in the final version of the Violin Concerto, it is written in much the same lyrical spirit. The reprise of the main theme, on the violin in counterpoint with an elaborate right-hand piano part, is a particularly engaging inspiration