Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovksy was born
on May 7, 1840, in Russia. Early in his life he attended the Moscow
Conservatory, which is where a lot of his well-known works were completed. His
work was first publicly performed in 1865. In 1868, his First Symphony was
well-received. In 1874, he established himself with his Piano Concerto No. 1 in
B-flat Minor. Tchaikovsky resigned from the Moscow conservatory in 1878 and
spent the rest of his career just composing. He died in St. Petersburg on
November 6, 1893.
In September 1880, Tchaikovsky
wrote to his patron Nadezhda von Meck, “No, sooner had I begun to spend several
days relaxing, than I began to feel somewhat restless and rather unwell… I
busied myself a little with designs for a future symphony. I immediately began
to feel cheerful, well and relaxed. Now here I am already with designs for a
symphony or string quartet; I do not yet which.”
Just one month later the
“symphony or string quartet” had found a final form, and he told von Meck the
results of his efforts. “I have written two long works very rapidly: the
festival overture and a serenade in four movements for string orchestra. The
overture will be very noisy. I wrote it without much warmth of enthusiasm. The
Serenade, however, I wrote from an inward impulse.” The piece has remained in
the orchestral repertoire since the first public performance in 1882. The light first movement is bracketed by a slow folk-like theme that also appears at the end of the entire work. The second movement is a waltz with the flowing melody we learned about in Symphony No. 4. The third movement begins with a sweet, romantic, motive, but turns at the end.
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