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Tchaikovsky |
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TH 37 Characteristic DancesХарактерные танцыFor orchestra (?1865).
HistoryComposed and scored in Saint Petersburg, presumably in the spring of 1865. According to Modest Tchaikovsky, "it is difficult to establish their date of composition, but it can certainly be said that by the spring of 1865 they had already been completed and, were ready for public performance" [1]. On 30 August/11 September 1865 the first performance of the Characteristic Dances took place at Pavlovsk. Tchaikovsky reported to Aleksandra Davydova in a letter of 1/13 September 1865: "I have still not heard any music whatsoever: by an odd combination of circumstances the day that I left [for Saint Petersburg] my dances were played for the first time in Pavlovsk; but I only saw the poster in the evening, when it was too late to go. Laroche went, and was very satisfied with the whole thing" [2]. The conductor of the Characteristic Dances was Johann Strauss [3]. This performance of the Characteristic Dances was the first public performance of any of Tchaikovsky’s works, and it was the first appearance of his name on a concert programme. In 1867, when composing the opera The Voevoda, Tchaikovsky included the Characteristic Dances in a reorchestrated and somewhat altered form in Act II of the opera, calling them Dances of the Chambermaids. In this revised form and under a new title, the "Dances from the opera The Voevoda" were performed in Moscow for the first time at the second symphony concert of the Russian Musical Society on 2/14 December 1867, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein, and were published in an arrangement for piano duet. The Characteristic Dances are unpublished [4]. From: Музыкальное наследие Чайковского (1958),
pp. 273–274 References:
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