Est 1923

Tchaikovsky Piano Works

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 75

Catalogue Number: OCD192

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Sonata for Piano Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Composer
Peter Katin, Piano
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Composer
(The) Seasons Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Composer
Peter Katin, Piano
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Composer
Tchaikovsky's most recent and scholarly biographer, David Brown (Tchaikovsky—The crisis years, 1874-1878; Gollancz: 1982), states bluntly that the Piano Sonata is ''a strong candidate as the dullest piece Tchaikovsky ever wrote'', and if you agree there is not much point in reading any further. While recognizing that it is no masterpiece, I have always had rather a soft spot for it since hearing it on an old Russian recording by Richter that, annoyingly, has eluded my recent attempts to unearth it. Peter Katin obviously admires the work, too, but I think it is significant that he says, in his note in the accompanying CD leaflet, that ''to me it represents a successful effort to write what is virtually a symphony for solo piano''. He certainly makes out a good case for it, particularly in the nimble, light-textured scherzo and in the brooding Andante (which precedes it); but the two outer movements, a massive and rather remorseless sonata-form Moderato e risoluto and a vigorous rondo, occasionally suffer from a lack of really sharply etched rhythmic definition.
The seasons is also unfamiliar, and small-scale (but undeniably attractive) Tchaikovsky. The title is misleading, since the collection consists of 12 short pieces composed at monthly intervals in 1875-6 (two years before the Sonata) and depicting the months of the year, which Tchaikovsky wrote for a monthly periodical, Nouvelliste. It seems to me that Katin warms to them as he progresses: ''September'' and ''October'' find him in especially good form. But he faces formidable competition in the performance by Lydia Artymiw on Chandos, which often displays a vein of fantasy and poetry that is very appropriate to the pieces (particularly ''January'' and ''June'', with their intimations of Eugene Onegin), but which somehow eludes Katin. Her recording is rather 'closer' than is Katin's (made in Oslo last September), but that is not a fault in this intimate music. The Chandos accompanying notes do include the poetic epigraphs, by Pushkin, Tolstoy and others, with which Tchaikovsky prefaced the individual pieces, whereas the Olympia do not. But the Chandos issue offers only The seasons, while the Olympia offers the Sonata as well, and that is a consideration not to be dismissed lightly.'

Tchaikovsky Piano Works

Sonata for Piano

(The) Seasons

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