A Song for All Seasons

Our copy of Tchaikovsky's Seasons had vanished after we moved to Berlin, much to my disappointment. But today I poked among the notes behind the piano, where I had poked a dozen times before, and saw a slim, dark blue volume beside Bach's partitas. "Can it be?" I asked myself. I took it out and realized, "It is!"

The Seasons consists of twelve pieces, one for each month, with a folkloric theme for each, and a quotation from a Russian writer. It begins with January: "At the Fireplace," a thoughtful Russian-sounding song, prefaced by a quotation from Alexander Pushkin, which is in German in our edition:

"Und den Winkel friedlicher Wonne
Kleidet die Nacht in Dunkel,
Im Kamin verlöscht das Feuerchen,
Und die Kerze ist heruntergebracht."*

My favourite piece is August (Harvest), though I've never played it all the way through; I like the melody and its mournful, hurried, uneasy atmosphere, in particular when it is played slowly. One can picture a muddy hay-field with labourers binding the sheaves, or a potato field with farmers digging out the tubers, on a frosty, windy day where the large clouds race before the sun and plunge the world into gloom, in anticipation of winter.

February is at the carneval, March is the song of a lark, April devoted to the snowdrop, and so on and so forth, all the way to the grand waltz that announces "Christmas" for December. I haven't grasped how Tchaikovsky should be played yet; I can tell that the pieces have a distinctly Russian character, for instance, but I don't bring it out properly. There are no other pieces I can recollect where I have made so little progress over time, but I am evidently not discouraged. With every piece I do the best I can at the time I practice; and I'm accustomed to feeling that my version sounds mediocre whenever I compare it to a good recording or the way I play it on days where rather brilliant interpretations come by inspiration.

Besides this, I played Bach's Goldberg Variations (variations 9, 10, and 16), Beethoven dances and sonata movements, Chopin's "Raindrop" prélude, Schumann's Kinderszenen, Schubert's sonata in A major (D 959, Mvt. 1-3), and tried to sightread the first six pages of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (c sharp minor).

P.S.: I'll write about our Christmas preparations, etc., some other time.

* "And the corner of peaceful cheer
The night enfolds in darkness;
The flame expires in the hearth
And the candle is sunken."

Link: Recording of "January" on YouTube. If you search for "Emil Gilels Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky" you should also find an excellent recording of Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto.