Tchaikovsky: String Quartet No.2 in F major, Op.22 (1873)  

Adagio – Moderato assai (quasi Andantino)
Scherzo:- Allegro giusto
Andante ma non tanto
Finale:- Allegro con moto

Nineteenth century Russia generally lacked a strong quartet tradition: her finest examples were undoubtedly by Tchaikovsky and Borodin – a grand total of five and a quarter! – but those of the latter were disapproved of by his Nationalist colleagues in “The Five”, while Pyotr Ilyich listed chamber compositions with strings among his most hated instrumental combinations! An amateur enthusiasm proliferated, typified by the Friday quartet meetings at the home of Belaiev and his subsequent publication of various short pieces in two volumes, appropriately entitled Les Vendredis. However, it has to be said that the leading Russian composers were temperamentally more suited to the scale and dramatic scope of opera and symphony. Nevertheless, the example set by those two masters was soon taken up by such successors as Glazunov and Taneyev, both of whom produced substantial bodies of quartets; the mantle eventually passed to Dmitri Shostakovich, who singlehandedly changed one particular course of Russian musical history, in that scores of Soviet composers have since turned out scores of quartets, the majority clearly demonstrating their debt and influence.

Of all the greatest composers Tchaikovsky must be one of the least comprehensively known and understood: from his enormous output one could list about fifteen works – virtually all of them orchestral – which have since achieved a popularity which this tragically self-doubting man could only dream about. Thereafter comes an inexplicable gulf dividing fame from obscurity. Amongst all this relatively unknown music are the five full scale chamber works; only five, it is true, which suggests that Tchaikovsky felt far less at home in such constrained surroundings. He himself admitted as much, but in this sense he is no different from the majority of later nineteenth century composers. Indeed, his friend Laroche writes of Tchaikovsky’s musical likes and dislikes – not only with regard to composers past and present but also to instrumental combinations: it would appear that he sported a particular contempt for solo piano with orchestra, and for chamber works with strings! And even though the piano trio must be regarded as one of his finest and most deeply personal creations, yet he himself declared on more than one occasion that he found this particular combination of instruments “torture to listen to”! However, the established string quartet repertoire is a particularly exclusive company, and the quartets of Tchaikovsky – as with so many of his contemporaries – are only reluctantly admitted. But unlike most of those contemporaries Tchaikovsky is usually prepared to accept the strictures imposed by the medium, and does not normally strive for orchestral sonorities. Inevitably one can detect the occasional passage, particularly in this F major quartet, where his exuberance led him to overstep the boundaries of idiomatic quartet writing; yet at the same time the first movement displays a lightness and elegance of touch which at times recalls the assurance and effortless skill of Mozart or Mendelssohn. 

In the summer of 1873 Tchaikovsky spent his holidays in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and France. But he was restless the whole time and on his return to Russia passed a couple of weeks at Oussovo, in the steppes, where, in his solitude, he at last felt able to relax. He arrived home in excellent spirits and immediately set to work on this, his second string quartet. The piece has provoked wildly varying opinions: the composer’s healthy frame of mind notwithstanding, Edwin Evans curiously observes that “not a ray of sunshine is allowed to show itself through the entire first movement”; and in his otherwise excellent book on the composer Michel Hoffman judges it to be inferior to the other quartets, lacking real spontaneity of feeling. Even our leading British Tchaikovsky scholar, the late Prof. David Brown, considered that “for all its impeccable skill and fertile detail, the [first] movement is too bland”! Yet Tchaikovsky himself wrote, “I have always looked upon it as one of my finest scores. None was composed more easily and spontaneously. I wrote the quartet in one breath, as it were”.

The Fitzwilliam has always preferred to accept Tchaikovsky’s own valuation here! Nevertheless, it must be said that, for this most communicative of composers, Op.22 can seem strangely inaccessible: it requires truly concentrated listening for its great beauties to make their fullest impact. Parts of the first movement do indeed wear a subdued tone which, together with its unusually bold harmonic language and its lack of the expected “big tune”, can make it difficult to grasp. For example, the very opening could almost have been imagined by Schönberg, beginning as it does with a dissonant cluster of three whole tones, which only slowly spread into a recognisable cadence. Indeed, there is no key signature for the whole of the introduction, and the absence of tangible tonality is not really resolved until the first movement proper is well under way – and even then the tonal centre is ambiguous, suggesting G minor before eventually arriving in the long strived-for home key of F major. After such intense searching, the second subject wears a thoroughly out-of-doors air, so essentially Russian with its fragment of earthy tune repeated to characteristic changing backgrounds. Indeed, the 1870s saw Tchaikovsky at his most nationalistic – as much so as Borodin, Mussorgsky, or any of The Five – deeply influenced by the leader of the group, Balakirev. Such works as the Little Russian symphony (No.2), music for The Snow Maiden, the folk opera Vakula the Smith (later re-written as Cherevichki) all came out of these years, reaching a climax with what Stravinsky later described as the most Russian of all operas, Eugene Onegin. Much of Quartet No.2 inhabits this world, and is all the more precious for the joy and passion it communicates.

The next movement proves to be a clever combination of scherzo superimposed onto an oblique waltz, achieved through its puzzling seven-beat lilt – maybe a model for the five-beat waltz in the sixth symphony. No less characteristic is the highly poignant Andante which follows – a more extended and eloquent version of the type of piece epitomised by the famous Andante Cantabile from his previous quartet. The opening gesture of this wonderful movement seems to foreshadow the corresponding moment at the beginning of the finale in the aforementioned sixth symphony; and indeed this otherwise sunny, exuberant, and energetic work does occasionally reveal unexpected portends of what was recently described by a leading scholar as “one of the great symphonies”. As in some other works of this period (for example, the third symphony) Tchaikovsky approaches the climax of his finale (likewise in polacca style) by way of a fully worked out fugue, bristling with quirky fun; after which a coda of hair raising difficulty (and dissonance) rounds off a typically large scale composition with a barely contained recklessness.

© Alan George
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