Piotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Andante cantabile from String Quartet No. 1 in D major Op. 11

Tchaikovsky wrote his String Quartet No. 1 in D major Op. 11 in February 1871, with a concert of his work for his 31st birthday in mind. The four-movement piece was finally performed as one of a series of concerts of the Russian Musical Society in Moscow in March the same year. Its triumph might have been at least partially owed to the ensemble of excellent violinist Ferdinand Laub, of whom someone wrote that “he surreptitiously promotes the quartet style and the quartet repertoire in our country.”
In fact, Tchaikovsky was still a student when he wrote his String Quartet in B flat major, successfully performed at a student concert of Henryk Wieniawski’s quartet class in 1865. At that, however, chamber concerts were not at all popular in Russia, and the available Russian repertoire – very scant. It took three mature quartets by Tchaikovsky and two by Borodin to trigger the development of the genre in Russian music.
Tchaikovsky dedicated his First Quartet to his friend Sergei Rachinsky, botanist and amateur writer, whose opera librettos he consistently rejected. The work pleased the audience especially thanks to its slow part, later transcribed by the composer for violin and piano, and then for string orchestra (1888).
The movement in question is Andante cantabile in B flat major. Its main theme is maintained in compound metre, the course of which is occasionally distorted by complex measures. Tchaikovsky heard the tune in Kamionka in the Ukraine. Introduced by four instruments (with mutes), it is then developed in variations, only to return to its original form at the end of the section. The middle fragment (D flat major) is based on a different, quasi-serenade theme, accompanied by Tchaikovsky’s beloved ostinato pizzicato. The whole ends with the final repetition of the irregular Ukrainian melody.

Wiesława Berny-Negrey