Tchaikovsky: The Seasons

The changing seasons deserve better than to be represented musically in just four tableaux, surely? Tchaikovsky did not set out to put this matter right, but luckily for us he accepted a commission from a musical monthly publication to contribute a new piano piece for amateur performers in twelve successive issues, each piece having a vague specific relevance to each month in question. He arranged for a monthly reminder, and when it was served he sat down and knocked out the pieces at a single sitting each. Not exactly carried along on a hurricane of irresistible divine afflatus, I suppose, but so what? Tchaikovsky was Tchaikovsky, and he could tap into the divine jetstream as he pleased. The pieces are something between Schubert's Moments Musicaux and Grieg's Lyric Pieces. They are not etudes or Songs Without Words, they are neither beginners' works nor virtuoso stuff, and they show respect for their intended public without being patronising. The other five pieces making up this recital are incidental by-products of his musical and orchestral workshop, unless we should make an exception for the Aveu Passionne, which turns out to be an arrangement of a sequence from the 'symphonic ballad' Voyevoda, itself in turn something left over from an opera project manqué.

This is Ashkenazy the pianist in 1999, and it turns out that he too had a commission to fulfil, playing for the soundtrack of a cinema version of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. By that time Ashkenazy had meandered, like some other eminent solo musicians, down a hopeful sunset path as a conductor, and it is a special pleasure to welcome him back to the task nature intended him for.

If you are sampling this disc do not, if I may suggest, make the mistake that I made at first hearing. My first reaction was to think the sound over-resonant, and the reason I thought so was that I was subconsciously listening out for Ashkenazy the super-virtuoso. These are not virtuoso works, and Ashkenazy has more sense and more good taste than to play them as if they were. This is how they should have sounded from the more adept of their original performers, and the more I got on to the player's new wavelength the more touching and affecting I started to find the performances. The sound that I first found to be too resonant has come to seem to me rich and comforting, and that was never the kind of sound that I looked for from Ashkenazy in the old days. The recording has a lot to do with this as well, obviously, and presumably they all worked out the effect by consultation among themselves, unless it just turned out right by happenstance.

The other reason for my 5-star rating is simply the choice of the music here. I don't think we hear Tchaikovsky's solo piano material much, no doubt because it is not the stuff of recitals at the Carnegie Hall or the Barbican or those sorts of places. My collection already contains the 18 late pieces that he wrote `for the money' played by Pletnev, and the piano sonata, which has anything that can be done for it done for it by Richter. Neglected piano music does not often come up to this sort of quality, and I am grateful to all concerned for this particular enterprise.

There is quite a good liner note by Tim Parry, mainly about the music as it should be but making reference to the 1962 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, in which Ashkenazy shared the first prize with our late and much lamented John Ogdon. What had happened was that this prize had always gone to Russians until the previous occasion when there had been no option but to give it to Van Cliburn. Now it was obviously having to go to Ogdon, and in the sulphurous bathybunkers of Soviet committeedom it was seen as necessary to yank a reluctant Ashkenazy out on to the platform to save Soviet face by sharing the award. He duly shared it, and for all I ever knew maybe he deserved to. Where are they now, I wondered in the afterglow of the Soviet Union

Come we where Chekhov and Tchaikovsky are,
And good John Ogdon, we are dust and dreams.
[apologies to Housman]

I think I recommend this disc more for its sense of being a rite of passage, a sense of crossing the bar, than for anything else. The other names are long gone, but Vladimir Ashkenazy still bestrides the generations, and the music will do that far more so, as long as we take the trouble to get to know it.

Ashkenazy fine rendering of Tchaikovsky's `The Seasons' was recorded in 1998.

Tim Parry notes in the accompanying booklet how Tchaikovsky rarely composed for solo piano, and only then he concentrated on miniatures, "short to medium-length pieces, usually written with the domestic market in mind and often as light relief from more weighty projects." `The Seasons' is thus arguably the composers greatest work of piano. Although its title should strictly be `The Months', the twelve short items last from between less than two minutes to five-and-a-half in length, following the year as it runs from a January by the fireside through to Christmas at the end of the year. Parry notes how, "Time and again in these miniatures the image is orchestral" rather than strictly pianistic.

There are five extra pieces to bring the total time on the disc of sixty-seven minutes, three of them from Tchaikovsky's other great piano set, his `Dix-huit morceaux'. The other two are salon miniatures.

As for the sound, it is unfortunate that my copy has a mysterious and muffled `hiss' during some of the quieter months such as June's 'Barcarolle' and October's `Song of Autumn'. The hiss is definitely linked with the piano's sound itself, like an echo. The note is heard and then immediately followed by the `hiss'; it lasts only a micro-second but is noticeable all the same.

The 17 tracks on this CD provide over 66 minutes of listening pleasure.

The piano sound is splendid and the piano playing is faultless; as one would expect from Ashkenazy. On first acquaintance one might not decide on Tchaikovsky as the composer. With increasing familiarity one detects themes in these solo piano pieces from his better-known symphonic work.

Track 11, "June", was used in Season 9 of The X Files in the episode titled "Trust No 1" (9x08). It was an inspired choice in the context of that episode.

This is lovely music that deserves to be heard more. Heartily recommended.