I m of the general opinion, that Tchaikovsky's 3rd, is perhaps his weakest of all of his canon. He, I think, had to do something special, when he commenced the 4th.
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Don’t cry for me
I go where music was born
J S Bach 1685-1750 -
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Or in Alwyn's recording a slowed down recording of a shotgun!Originally posted by Beef Oven! View PostComment
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boom!!!Originally posted by Beef Oven! View PostDon’t cry for me
I go where music was born
J S Bach 1685-1750Comment
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Muti programmed all the Symphonies, including Manfred, here last year. I was present for Winter Dreams, the Third and Manfred, because I had never heard any of them in Concert, whereas 4,5, and 6 seem to be programmed yearly, and 2 fairly frequently.Originally posted by AjAjAjH View PostIs there anyone else out there who loves the 3rd Symphony but looks in vain to see it scheduled for performance by the orchestra(s) they support?
I love Tchaikovsky and was thinking about performances of the 5th Symphony (my favourite) I have heard when I read of the death of Stanislaw Skrowszewski.
His performance was the most Barbaric I have heard.
Rozhdestvensky the most Russian and Mark Elder the most English.
I do think 3 is the weakest of the lot, but there are worse ways to spend half an hourComment
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Yesterday evening I was at a concert that included Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet overture, which I'm pretty sure I'd neither heard in a concert or otherwise paid close attention to. Some remarks:
It doesn't really occupy its (twenty-minute) duration very well. It seems to consist principally of two main themes plus a great deal of "filler" in between their appearances. I know the "filler" is intended as a third thematic group and the whole as a sonata structure but I couldn't hear it like that.
When Tchaikovsky writes for orchestral tutti (as in the martial theme) the timbre is always the same (ie. in voicing and orchestration), not only in this piece but between this and his other orchestral music. It's a stereotypically bombastic sound that I really don't like. The most imaginative piece of orchestration for me was the first entry of the love theme on violas and english horn.
In other words I was left underwhelmed by the whole thing, which seemed to me rather unsubstantial and as if all its rewritings resulted in an ill-fitting patchwork. I hope I will have a chance to hear more live Tchaikovsky before long because this didn't leave a very encouraging impression!Comment
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This was one of the works played at my first ever live concert in October 1960. I've always considered one of the composer's best constructed pieces, in perfectly executed sonata form.
I suppose the sumptuous orchestration will not please everyone, but when he wrote this work, Tchaikovsky was at the forefront of orchestration. But yes, the love theme on violas and English horn is particularly special.Comment
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It is a work difficult to dislike and what's wrong with a bit of sumptuous orchestration. I probably put it behind Francesca and Hamlet in the 'playlist pecking order' but that is probably down to hearing and listening frequently to the Stokowski StadiumSO WRC LP all those years ago.Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View PostComment
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I don't find it at all sumptuous! And I would say that at the time Wagner and Rimsky were "at the forefront of orchestration" more than Tchaikovsky was.Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View PostComment
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Romeo and Juliet is one of the composer's most programmed works; a very comonly used overture. I love the melodies and too find it somewhat overlong.Originally posted by Richard Barrett View PostComment
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When you say at the time, his early days or later? I always find it both interesting and disconcerting that it does not have an opus no - but originally written in 1870 it would have been Op9.5 or its revised, and presumably final version was 1880 and therefore Op40 something and a contemporary of Capriccio Italien ( nicely sumptuous in parts) and the Serenade for Strings (beautifully schmaltzy in parts), call me a softy but I love them both!Originally posted by Richard Barrett View PostComment
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Here I shall have to defer to the experts, because I don't really know which parts were written "early" and which were added later, and if the early parts were re-orchestrated in the revision, and if so to what extent. For me his orchestral writing hits a peak in the 4th Symphony. But maybe I only say that because I know it much better than anything else of his.Originally posted by cloughie View PostComment
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O, yes!, the sheer joy and wonder of hearing the R & J Fantasy overture in the spacious RAH as a Prommer is forever 'in my memory lock'd'... As a young thesp, I was cast as Benvolio - a learning curve when I learnt to accept that Romeo would never be in my cv
- but I also had the privilege of speaking the Prologue, timed to fit the percussion beat of the overture in the background, accompanied by a sense of adrenalin rush and its lesson of split-second timing. I can still feel the impetus.
"Two households both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
and the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which but their children's end naught could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which, if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss our toil shall strive to mend."
Enunciate clearly, no put-on voices, and Shakespeare will do all the work.
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