Tchaikovsky, The Seasons (“May – Starlit Nights”)

The changing seasons have inspired numerous compositions. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons comes to mind immediately, and also Fanny Mendelssohn’s Das Jahr. Last week we featured Johann Strauss’s Frühlingsstimmen (Voices of Spring). Spring seems a particularly popular theme: Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Schumann’s Spring Symphony.

Tchaikovsky wrote a collection of short piano works for each month of the year, the pattern followed in Das Jahr. They were commissioned for the St. Petersburg music magazine Nouvellist and scheduled to appear in each successive month of 1876.

The Seasons is not often performed. I heard the full set performed only once several years ago. I remember it primarily because my father played some of them, and they are embedded in my memories from childhood. Each individual piece is relatively short and often reflective and intimate, although a few are rather lively. Tchaikovsky’s skill as a melodist gives many of them the character of songs without words. Some of them became popular as encore pieces. You can hear the complete set by Olga Scheps at this link.

When published, the magazine’s editor chose an epigraph for each individual work. The one for May came from Afanasy Fet:

What a night! What bliss all about!
I thank my native north country!
From the kingdom of ice, from the kingdom of snowstorms and snow,
how fresh and clean May flies in!