Who cancelled Tchaikovsky?
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
Whatever became of Tchaikovsky? Time was when concert halls had to limit the number of seasonal performances of the fifth and sixth symphonies, the violin and piano concertos, such was their appeal to audiences and conductors. And the range of interpretations was infinite… from Karajan to Muti to Gergiev to Solti.
And now? Nyet.
It may be that Tchaikovsky has fallen into our general trend of disfavour with Russian expansionism…
Read on here.
And here.
En francais ici.
I’m not sure a composer who lived his entire life in pre-Soviet Imperial Russia is losing ground due to anti-Russian sentiment.
I do notice a bit of a drop off of his works on my calendar, but I attribute that to a few major composer anniversaries either recently passed or upcoming, like Bernstein and Bruckner. That, and what seems like a genuine desire on part of management to broaden the repertoire we play.
Tchaikovsky isn’t going to be lost, we just have a lot of great music to cycle through…
I tend to agree with that. I have seen seasons (plural) without Brahms, certainly without Rossini, without Liszt — generally thought to be crowd-pleasers. Many absences.
There are a lot of composers, and a smaller number of concerts, and orchestras often cry out for something new to play. (Not “new music,” just new to their annual rep.
I don’t think anyone is being “cancelled”: they are just making room for others. And many orchestras are involved with ballet companies, few of which can afford NOT to include some Tchaikovsky in THEIR repertoire. I know dancers who would kill for a new Christmas ballet rather than The Nutcracker, but it tends to pay the bills, and their salaries, for the rest of the season.
New music does not pay anyone’s salary, but “something we have not heard in a concert in ages” will.
Tchaikovsky was at his greatest as a theatrical composer, IMO. You can still hear his music at the ballet or in the opera. As for the concert hall, not so much. His symphonies – mainly 4, 5, 6 – have been done to death and there’s just so much available through the recorded medium.
Bruckner is more fashionable today. I loved Dr. John McWhorter’s description of a Bruckner symphony, “a dense, grandiloquent crawl”!! Apposite.
Tchaikovsky has been overtaken in popularity by Mahler. This has been going on for a long time, perhaps half a century. But the early Tchaikovsky symphonies, the Winter Dreams, Little Russian and Polish, really ought to be featured more nowadays. They’re not profound works perhaps, but they’re terrific. Stravinsky loved them, by the way. Most listeners are only faintly aware of them.
In Stravinsky’s “Le baiser de la fée” one can hear his love for Tchaikovky:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd5HNdFvrKk
There are three inevitable things in life: Death, Taxes,….and
Tchaikovsky…..
What a weird thing to say! In the next three weeks alone in the UK there are three performances of the Fifth symphony, three of the First Piano Concerto, several of his pieces at the Wigmore and major ongoing runs of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. And that’s only the professional ensembles. Absolutely no shortage.
Mahler, now, does seem to be having a bit of a dip…
Whatever the case with concert programs, he certainly has not lost air time on the few remaining U.S. classical radio stations, where Tchaikovsky and Mozart seem to alternate throughout the day.
I have cancelled him ages ago on account of his music. Nothing political.
such shame to deprive yourself of some of the most beautiful music in the orchestral repertoire…
It’s old fuddy-duddy stuff and on top of that, the composer had a beard.
Sally
No issue with a dearth of this composer in Philadelphia; in fact the opposite.
Piano Concerto # 2 is brilliant and under exposed.
Well I have or will hear the Violin Concerto 3 times within a year. Within a year – Violin Concerto at BBC Proms in late August, same at Carnegie Hall with Chicago and Muti in October and again will be done at Lucerne Festival in September of this year.
As far as Tchaikovsky recordings go, Paavo Jarvi’s cycle was only completed very recently. And a few years before, Petrenko’s BPO Pathétique was pretty good.
I heard the London Symphony perform the Sixth Symphony in early December at the Barbican with Noseda…spectacular performance.
I admit I don’t seek out most of Tchaikovsky and try hard to avoid the first piano concerto and R&J. But I don’t recall any dearth of Tchaikovsky at the NSO or Baltimore (and I think they’re both playing #4 this season).
I’d definitely be interested in hearing the first three symphonies (Manfred, not so much) and the 2nd piano concerto over the first any time. I’d also be up for hearing the full ballet scores in concert – played in full symphonic glory rather than by an under-powered, under-rehearsed pit orchestra in a staged ballet.
Suite #3 is a wonderful piece.
Schönberg expressed, somewhere in the twenties, so in the midst of his atonal 12-tone period, that he wished to become as well-known and loved as Tchaikovsky, ‘only a bit better’ as he added.