Although the orchestra was the most natural vehicle for Tchaikovsky’s colourful and emotionally highly-charged music, in his string quartets (all dating from the 1870s) he showed a fine understanding of the medium and adopted a more purely musical train of thought – deriving in part from his deep fondness for the classical world of Mozart – without losing his own personality. Souvenir de Florence, his string sextet, dates from 1890–91 and Tchaikovsky confided in his friend Alexander Siloti that he feared he was thinking in orchestral terms before arranging his ideas for string sextet; the work is performed here in a version for string orchestra, from a much-praised Argo recording with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, which went on to win an Edison Award.
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
CD 1
String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 11
String Quartet No. 2 in F major, Op. 22
CD 2
String Quartet No. 3 in E flat minor, Op. 30
Gabrieli String Quartet
Souvenir de Florence, Op. 70
Arranged for string orchestra
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Sir Neville Marriner
Recording Producers: Richard Beswick (String Quartets); Michael Bremner (Souvenir de Florence)
Balance Engineers: Stanley Goodall (No. 1); Kenneth Wilkinson, Simon Eadon (No. 2); Kenneth Wilkinson (No. 3, Souvenir de Florence)
Recording Location: Kingsway Hall, London, UK, 20–21 May 1976 (No. 1), 27 September 1976 (No. 3), 14–16 December 1976 (No. 2), 9–10 April 1968 (Souvenir de Florence)
‘beautifully natural and well-blended sound’ (String Quartets) Gramophone, 1978
‘the Gabrielis give a finely conceived performance, producing well-blended tonal quality’ Penguin Guide to Compact Discs