Full Playlist:
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Sir Neville Marriner
Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart
Movements and Duration:
There are five movements, and a complete performance lasts approximately 35 to 40 minutes.
No.1.Jeu de sons
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Andantino un poco rubato
No.2.Valse
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Moderato tempo di valse
No.3.Scherzo burlesque
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Vivace, con spirito
No.4.Rêves d'enfant
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Andante molto sostenuto
No.5.Danse baroque
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Vivacissimo
Tchaikovsky
(1883)
Orchestral Suite No. 2
in C major, Op. 53
"Suite Caractéristique"
It was written and orchestrated between June and October 1883.
Instrumentation:
The Suite is scored for an orchestra consisting of 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets (in A, C), 2 bassoons + 4 horns (in F), 2 trumpets (C, E), 3 trombones, tuba + 4 timpani, tambourine, triangle, cymbals, bass drum + harp, violins I, violins II, violas, cellos, double basses.
The Scherzo burlesque includes parts for four accordions ad libitum, and Tchaikovsky's note at the head of this movement reads:
To receive the proper effect of this piece, accordions are very much desirable, but not essential. They should be in the key of E and with 10 keys. The performers of the first and second accordion parts should use their right hands for the 6th and 7th stops, and the performers of the third and fourth parts on the 2nd and 3rd. In both cases the left hand should be used for both large stops. The large notes relate to the sounds produced with the right hand, and the small notes to the bass chords produced by pressing with the left hand.
Composition:
Tchaikovsky spent the late spring and early summer of 1883 with his brother Anatoly after spending some hectic months before that writing first his opera Mazeppa, then a march and the cantata Moscow for the coronation of Alexander III as tsar. Anatoly, now contentedly married and recently a father, had rented a house at Podushkino, near Moscow. Tchaikovsky found the house's location to be attractive and he often roamed the surrounding woods, picking mushrooms. He spent three months at Podushkino, two of them correcting proofs to Mazeppa but also finding time to sketch out his Second Orchestral Suite.
When Tchaikovsky left Podushkino on September 13 to visit his sister Alexandra at her estate at Kamenka in Ukraine, his priority was to finish this suite. He spent two and a half months at Kamenka. The first five weeks of that time, six hours a day, were spent finishing the composition of and scoring the suite. He had explained to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck at the beginning of September that if the work were not completed by the beginning of the winter concert season, he would not be able to find out how the work sounded during his time in Moscow. He was most anxious to do so, he explained, "because I have used some new orchestral combinations which interest me greatly." The fact that he took more than five weeks to complete orchestrating the work, despite his sometimes working six hours a day on it, shows the great care he took over this operation.
Tchaikovsky finished the suite on October 25. Max Erdmannsdörfer conducted the work the following February in Moscow. However, if the composer's eagerness to hear the work were still present, he likely satisfied it during rehearsal. The tensions of supervising the Moscow premiere of Mazeppa, which took place the night before the suite's first performance, had tried him severely, and he left for the West to recover before the suite had been played. Erdmannsdörfer was offended by the composer's inability to wait one extra day before leaving.
Arrangements:
While engaged in orchestrating the Suite the composer simultaneously made the arrangement for piano duet (4 hands), which he considered necessary so that the full score and the arrangement could be printed at the same time. This urgency led him to entrust Aleksandra Hubert with making the arrangement of the Suite's first movement, but he wanted to arrange the other movements himself.
Publication:
In January 1884 the full score and piano duet arrangement were published by Pyotr Jurgenson in Moscow.
Autographs:
Tchaikovsky's manuscript full score (ф. 88, No. 75) and arrangement for piano duet (ф. 88, No. 76) are now preserved in the Russian National Museum of Music in Moscow.
Dedication:
To Praskovya Tchaikovskaya (1864–1956), wife of the composer´s brother Anatoly, with whom Tchaikovsky was staying at Podushkino when he composed the Suite.
