Tchaikovsky’s Voyevoda is a little-known and underrated piece – even by the composer, who fell out of love with it soon after he had written it and destroyed the score. Fortunately the orchestral parts survived, but not its reputation. It is championed by the distinguished Tchaikovsky scholar and biographer, David Brown, and Delos had the excellent idea of commissioning him to write the fascinating notes for this collection. Voyevoda has a rather similar narrative line to Francesca da Rimini. This time, however, the villain of the piece is a provincial governor (voyevoda), an unattractive Pushkin character who returns from a journey to discover his wife in the arms of her lover; but the retribution he seeks goes wrong and the bullet intended for the lover kills the voyevoda instead. The central section illustrates the love scene in the garden before the denouement; its scoring (which delicately features the celeste) is more restrained than the impassioned polyphony of Francesca and there is a sinister undulating passage featuring the bass clarinet, when the murder is plotted. The end is dramatic and brief.
The whole work is more subtle than the famous fantasy, but full of the melancholic atmosphere typical of its composer. It is splendidly played by the excellent Dallas Symphony under a natural Tchaikovskian, Andrew Litton. He is no less impressive in an extended series of excerpts from what Brown considers “one of Tchaikovsky’s three supreme masterpieces”, the Sleeping Beauty ballet (the others are the Pathetique Symphony and Eugene Onegin). The famous “Panorama” is a good test: it is played most gracefully and is nicely paced. The “Pas d’action” moves with a surge of ardour to its climax and the Adagio is similarly impassioned, while the other music is elegant and characterful.
The programme begins with an 1812 with a difference. It is heard in Ivor Buketoff’s arrangement (already known from his own old analogue LP) which returns to the words of the original folk-songs on which Tchaikovsky drew for his patriotic pieces. So the very opening, instead of being assigned to lower strings, becomes a chorus, “Grant salvation to the people, Lord”, the jollier of the two lyrical tunes in the middle becomes “At the gate to father’s dear house”, and the work ends with “God save our gracious Tsar”. The Dallas chorus sing ripely and with an expansiveness at the close that tends to upstage cannon and carillon to make a very lively 1812.
Perhaps most interesting of all the music here is the completely unknown cantata, Moscow, an 1883 commission for the coronation of Tsar Alexander III. For all its joyful exhortation, it is essentially a lyrical work (the opening is disarmingly elegiac) and when sung with such feeling (especially by two so obviously Slavic and ardent soloists, who are perfectly cast) it becomes an attractive novelty. Moscow is not a masterpiece, but it has real depth of feeling and a certain gravitas; it is well worth hearing.
The recording, as one expects from Delos in Seattle, is rich and spacious throughout: the chorus could perhaps have more bite, but they are very well balanced. All in all this is a worthwhile collection although one has to say that Tchaikovskians interested in the two unusual items will surely already have The Sleeping Beauty.'