Though Tchaikovsky was a solidly romantic composer, one of his idols was Mozart, whom he once referred to as
“the Christ of music.” Indeed, Tchaikovsky wrote that a performance of Don Giovanni he attended at the age of 10 was what introduced him to the power of music to express deep emotion.
So it is no surprise that in September of 1880, at the same time he was working on his thunderous 1812 Festival Overture, Tchaikovsky decided to write an orchestral serenade that would serve as an homage to Mozart’s own serenades. Inspired, he completed the work relatively quickly and appeared much more satisfied with it than its sister composition, the overture. As he wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, “The overture will be very showy and noisy, but will have no artistic merit because I wrote it without warmth and without love. But the Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from inner compulsion. This is a piece from the heart.” Later he told von Meck, “I am violently in love with this work and cannot wait for it to be played.” It was premiered in St. Petersburg in 1881 and met with instant success. Tchaikovsky even received congratulations on the work from another of his musical heroes, pianist and composer Anton Rubenstein.
The Serenade for Strings is not a truly classical piece in its musical content — it is as romantic as any of Tchaikovsky’s other works, and unlike Mozart’s serenade for a small group of strings, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Tchaikovsky’s serenade requires a full string choir to do justice to its sonorities. But though it does not sound precisely like Mozart, Tchaikovsky intended his work to be classical in form and spirit, especially in the stately opening theme of the first movement, recapitulated at the close of the final movement. This, he wrote to von Meck, “is my homage to Mozart; it is intended to be an imitation of his style, and I should be delighted if I thought I had in any way approached my model.”
This first movement, Pezzo in forma di Sonatina, moves from the measured Andante introduction to a simple, four-note theme in the Allegro that develops into vigorous scale passages demonstrating the various orchestral colors available within the strings alone. Yet this section, though brisk, is never forced or rushed; the brilliant passages simply complement the lilting movement of the Allegro theme.
The Valse of the second movement is Tchaikovsky’s 19th-century answer to the minuets of Mozart’s serenades. This graceful dance seems never far from Tchaikovsky’s ballets; in fact the movement, with portions of the rest of the work, was used by George Balanchine in his Serenade (1936). (Balanchine eventually expanded his ballet to include Tchaikovsky’s entire piece, although with the second and third movements reversed.) Each string section takes a turn carrying the dancing melody in counterpart to rhythmic lines from the other sections. The movement ends in a gentle pianissimo, leading to the quietly stated Elegia. Like the previous two movements, the third is build on a scale passage, this one rising in quietly building fervor. The lower strings carry a good portion of the songlike melody which, though called an elegy, is more reflective than truly somber.
The Finale is subtitled Tema russo, and includes two Russian folk tunes, both catalogued by composer and musicologist Mily Balakirev. The first, a slow tune sung by Volga draymen, appears in the Andante introduction. The second is an animated Russian dance, which Tchaikovsky scores at points with some quickly pulsing, balalaika-like pizzicato in octaves. Contrasted with this second theme is a third, lyrical motif by Tchaikovsky that provides broadly sweeping movement against the vivacious dance. The theme from the first movement’s Andante makes its reappearance, then Tchaikovsky cleverly transforms the descending portion of this stately theme into the pulsing descending scale of the dance, ending the piece with vigor.
February 23, 2003