Tchaikovsky
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TH 110

String Quartet

Струнный квартет

B♭ major (1865).

Adagio misterioso - Allegro con moto (B♭ major).

• Composed August - October 1865 (one movement only)
• Scored for Violin I; Violin II; Viola; Violoncello.
• First performed in Saint Petersburg (Conservatory), 30 October/11 November 1865.
• Average duration: 12m 30s.

History

A student work. Composed and scored between 15 August and 30 October 1865. The quartet was written on the theme of a Ukrainian song heard by Tchaikovsky from garden workers at Kamenka during the summer of that year. Only one movement survives - an Allegro, with an introduction and coda.

Modest Tchaikovsky believed that other movements may once have existed, but were presumably destroyed by the author. The quartet was performed for the first time on 30 October 1865, at the sixteenth musical evening for students at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory [1]. The performers were: Konstantin Pushilov, Dmitrii Panov, Vasilii Bessel and Aleksandr Kuznetsov.

In 1867 the main theme of the quartet was used by Tchaikovsky in the piano piece Scherzo á la russe.

Published for the first time in 1940 by Muzgiz (Moscow and Leningrad).

From: Музыкальное наследие Чайковского (1958), p. 367
English text copyright © 2006 Brett Langston

Notes:

1. M. I. Tchaikovsky, Жизнь Петра Ильича Чайковского, том 1 (1900), p. 197, 201, 273 [back]

See also:

• String Quartet in B-flat major page on the Internet Music Score Library Project (external site)

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