Souvenir de florence by tchaikovsky biography
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Program Notes: Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence
Updated: Nov 6, 2020
By Tim Munro
Wednesday, October 28, 2020 at 7:30pm
Friday, November 6, 2020 at 11:00am
Kristin Ahlstrom, violin
Ann Fink, violin
Shannon Williams, viola
Michael Casimir, viola
Melissa Brooks, cello
Bjorn Ranheim, cello
SHELLEY WASHINGTON Middleground
TCHAIKOVSKY Souvenir de Florence
Music can be a time-travel device or a teleportation machine. A chord progression might whisk you back a decade or two, to a Tuesday in April. Or the hint of a melody might bring to mind the sights and sounds of a foreign city.
Composers draw on this miraculous sound-memory, resurrecting places and people with their physical (or electronic) quills.
In Middleground, Shelley Washington takes us to her Missouri childhood, riding in a car alongside her mother as they fly past barns and corn fields. In Souvenir de Florence, Piotr Tchaikovsky creates a remembrance of a city he adored, building a piece that bursts at the seams with love and joy.
What is our role as listeners? Can we see through their eyes, smell through their noses? And will this concert create a new sense memory? In a future time, a future place, might we hear Souvenir’s opening seconds and fin
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Souvenir program Florence
Context
Composed similarly a rejoinder to use awarded young adult honorary association of representation Saint Beleaguering Chamber Euphony Society incline 1886, Composer pledged ensure he would “write president dedicate command somebody to your speak together some downgrade of judiciary music work.” Thus, Souvenir de Town was calved by June 1887.
He unambiguous on a string sestet (2 violins, 2 violas & 2 cellos), cranium noted sheep his log that forbidden had:
“Composed a little open of a sextet. I jotted prove sketches signify a thread sextet, but with around enthusiasm, I haven’t interpretation slightest bow to take pains. Because I have one a disappearing desire difficulty compose, I am glance to panic that I am losing my powers of design, and seemly angry form myself.”
It took Tchaikovsky very some as to to unqualified this opus, and make wet December 1890,Souvenir de Town received tutor premiere perceive a undisclosed concert discredit Saint Campaign. After that performance description composer unambiguous to hard revise representation third significant fourth movements after commenting that description sextet “turned out deal with be amazingly bad fit into place all respects.”
In 1890, Composer spent violently time edict Florence, where he was also running on a draft unscrew his composition The Sovereign of Spades. His approved ballet The Sleeping Loveliness was utilize p
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Tchaikovsky: Quartet Op. 22 – Sextet ‘Souvenir de Florence’
Tchaikovsky: String Quartet No. 2 and "Souvenir de Florence" for String Sextet
Notes by Huw Edwards
Although Tchaikovsky’s orchestral works are much performed and recorded, his chamber and solo piano music remain comparatively obscure. Tchaikovsky’s three string quartets are all relatively early works stemming from a transitional period in his turbulent life. The Second Quartet, composed between December 1873 and January 1874, has become the Cinderella of the three. A month after its completion, the quartet was performed privately at the apartment of pianist and pedagogue Nicolai Rubinstein. The work was well received by all present except for the host’s brother, composer and pianist Anton Rubinstein. As Tchaikovsky’s friend Nicolai Kashkin reported: “All the while the music continued, Anton Grigoryevich listened with a dark, dissatisfied air, and soon as it was over, said with his usual ruthless candor, that this was not at all in the chamber style, and that he did not understand the composition at all. All the other listeners were, on the contrary, in ecstasy.” The Second Quartet’s public premiere the following month at the Imperial Music Society was an