About this Piece

When Tchaikovsky entered the Moscow Conservatory as professor of harmony, he had two strikes against him: his own equivocating nature and his lack of emotional security. In March 1866 he began working diligently on his First Symphony, which caused him anguish for the remainder of that year. By May, he was in agony, as indicated by a letter to his brother Modest. “My nerves are again as upset as they could be. This is for the following reasons: 1) my lack of success in composing the symphony; 2) [Anton] Rubinstein and [Konstantin] Tarnovsky who, noticing that I’m edgy, spend all day frightening me by the most varied means; 3) the ever-present thought that I shall soon die and won’t even complete the symphony successfully.”

All was not dismal during that month, however, for his Overture in F had been performed with some success in St. Petersburg. This lift to his spirits carried over to his work on the symphony; in mid-June, he reported that he had begun scoring it. In August, he showed it in its incomplete state to his former teachers, Rubinstein and Nikolai Zaremba, from whom he received the harshest criticism. Finally, in February 1868, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1 was performed in Moscow in its entirety, and the composer could report to his brother Anatoly, “My Symphony scored a great success, particularly the Adagio.”

The composer’s affection for the firstborn of his symphonies was undiminished through the years. In 1883, he wrote to his benefactor Nadezhda von Meck, “Although it is in many ways very immature, yet fundamentally it has more substance and is better than many of my other more mature works.”

In spite of this notably sentimental remark, there is no question that the all-but-completely-neglected First Symphony does not have the strength, conviction, nor substance of the last three symphonies. That said, the work is genuine Tchaikovsky, not merely in embryo but fully formed, particularly in orchestration and thematic character.

“Winter Daydreams” is programmatic in an atmospheric rather than a precise, storytelling way. The first movement has an invigorating sense of spaciousness that is enhanced by the opening flute and bassoon announcement of the main theme. This is surely Russian music, not with the earthiness of Mussorgsky or the fairy-tale imagery of Rimsky-Korsakov, but with a folk spirit incorporated by sturdy if unassuming compositional craft. In this first movement, as in the remainder of the symphony, the Tchaikovskian orchestral trademarks are clearly in evidence: the exploitation of woodwinds, the rushing, brilliant string passages, the antiphonal (call-and-response) procedures.

The second movement, in which he used material from his overture The Storm of 1864, is again folk-like, wistful rather than dramatic and, like so much of Tchaikovsky, balletic in character.

Expectedly, the Scherzo, whose material is a reworking of the corresponding section of an early piano sonata, dances vibrantly and rustically if a bit self-consciously; at midpoint a waltz lilts pleasantly though not as memorably as some of the many later examples by Tchaikovsky.

For his Finale, Tchaikovsky meditates a bit, then puts a zesty dance theme through extended orchestral choreography, some of it contrapuntal, some march-like, and finally heads for a grand climactic rush of stately, ceremonial grandeur.

—Orrin Howard