String Quartet No.3 in E flat minor, Op.30 [1876]

The first performances of Tchaikovsky’s first two String Quartets - No.1 in D major in 1871 and No.2 in F major in 1874, both of them very successful - were led by the Moscow Conservatoire violinist Ferdinand Laub. The Third String Quartet in E flat minor which was completed in March 1876, a few months after Laub’s early death, is dedicated to his memory. Although Tchaikovsky, as usual, had doubts about the work - “I think I have written myself out,” he told his brother Modest - he was gratified to learn that at its first public performance the Andante funebre had moved many of the audience to tears: “If this is true,” he said, then it’s a great triumph.”

If Tchaikovsky wears his heart on his sleeve in his Quartet in E flat minor, he also has much up his other sleeve in terms of structural resource. Had there been no memorial intention behind the work, it is doubtful that the Allegro moderato first movement would have been framed by an Andante sostenuto with an achingly nostalgic violin melody as its main theme. At the same time, however, in the pained opening bars of the work Tchaikovsky is also thinking ahead and anticipating the rising inflections and dotted rhythms that, after a short pause, introduce the first theme (in E flat minor) of the Allegro moderato.

Those same thematic features also have an important role in holding together one of the most impressive of all Tchaikovsky’s sonata-form constructions. They are prominently placed in the transition to the second subject, a happier melody introduced in E flat major by violin in romantic exchange with the viola. Alongside a downard triplet motif derived from the second subject, they echo throughout the extensive and elaborately worked development section. Most imaginatively of all, they inspire an almost cheerful new melody that arises on cello in A major in the recapitulation, just before the recall of the second subject in E flat. The consolatory implication of these major harmonies proves illusory as the second subject is brought firmly into E flat minor and as, on the return of the Andante sostenuto material, the violin melody turns definitively towards the same key.

After a first movement ending with a significant episode at an Andante sostenuto tempo, it makes good strategic sense to reserve the slow movement until later. So, to clear the air in the meantime, Tchaikovsky interpolates a deftly scored scherzo, with delightfully witty outer sections in B flat major and a melodious, only faintly rueful middle section in D minor.

If the expressive intentions of the third movement were not clear enough from its Andante funebre e doloroso heading, the message conveyed by the opening bars - the shuddering E flat minor harmonies on muted strings, the funeral-march rhythm, the protesting violin recitatives - is unmistakable. Then there is an eerie echo of a distant Requiem harmonised in fourths and fifths followed by a chanted monotone on the second violin. As in the Marche funèbre of Chopin’s Sonata in B flat minor, the trio section is in the relative major, with the tearful melody on the first violin in this case and a murmuring accompaniment on the viola. Unlike Chopin, Tchaikovsky presents his trio section twice, the second time in B major, from which unlikely key he makes an ingenious return to E flat minor for the last return of the funeral march, the Requiem chanting and and ethereal ending.

For most of the E flat major Finale - based, like the last movement of the recently completed Piano Concerto in B flat minor, on vigorous Russian dance material - it seems that the grieving is now over. Irresistibly motivated by its brilliantly written contrapuntal episodes, it seems unstoppable. Even so, it is brought to a sudden halt by a brief but poignant memory of the pizzicato harmonies that accompanied the nostalgic violin melody in the Andante sostenuto introduction to the work. Instead of recalling the melody itself, however, Tchaikovsky offers a valedictory salute in a dying fall on the cello and, after a short pause, races off into a hectic Vivace coda.

Gerald Larner©