Tchaikovsky
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Flute Concerto

According to Alexander Poznansky's "The Tchaikovsky Handbook", Tchaikovsky was planning to compose in 1893, the year of his death, a Flute Concerto for the French virtuoso Paul Taffanel. There are sketches of the first and second themes, but they don't really make sense, or at least the second one sounds pretty strange. Does anyone know if Tchaikovsky was always writing flats and shaps in his sketches?

Simon Deschênes

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As co-author of The Tchaikovsky Handbook with Alexander Poznansky, I transcribed the themes for the projected Flute Concerto (p. 422) from a facsimile of the composer's sketches. It wasn't unusual for Tchaikovsky to omit accidentals (or even key signatures), in his rough work, and this has certainly happened in the case of the concerto's two themes. Rather than attempt to "guess" the composer's intentions, this just reflects what he had actually written, although the quality of the facsmile was poor.

Brett Langston

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