Six Romances, Op. 38 (a selection)

At the ball Op.38 No.3 (1878)

Don Juan’s serenade Op.38 No.1 (1878)

It was at the suggestion of his patron Nadezhda von Meck that Tchaikovsky included four settings of poems by Alexei Tolstoy in his Six Songs Op.38. At the ball, which he set as a waltz song that could almost have been written for Eugene Onegin, suited him very well. While his own instincts, on the other hand, would surely not have led him to pick on Don Juan’s Serenade, his characterisation both in terms of Juan’s personality and the Spanish idiom is nothing short of brilliant.