Tchaikovsky: The Seasons

Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (Composer), Vladimir Ashkenazy (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Vladimir Ashkenazy
• Composer: Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky
• Audio CD (November 9, 1999)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Decca
• ASIN: B000026CZJ
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #108,923 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Much of Tchaikovsky's piano music is trivia written for the salon, so a pianist must select carefully to hold our interest. Ashkenazy plays the entire series commonly mistranslated as The Seasons (it should be The Months, of course), pieces Tchaikovsky ground out under pressure for a monthly magazine. The pressure seems to have inspired him, as these are lovely miniatures. The additional pieces are also lovely, especially the Berceuse from Op. 72 (Tchaikovsky's last piano music), a breathtakingly beautiful piece. Best of all, Ashkenazy plays this music with total sympathy and a kind of rich piano tone he doesn't always exhibit, convincingly caught by Decca's engineers. Tchaikovsky completists may want to look elsewhere, but this is as fine a single-disc selection of his piano music as you will find. --Leslie Gerber

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine performances of Tchaikovsky's lesser known piano music, July 31, 2004

By 

John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tchaikovsky: The Seasons (Audio CD)

Vladimir Ashkenazy plays with much conviction and brilliance these lesser known works composed for the piano by Tchaikovsky. Undoubtedly the best is his performance of the Berceuse, the composer's last work for the piano, but those of the "The Seasons" are rich in pathos and other complex emotional shading too. Without question, Ashkenazy's performances of these works are compelling reasons why they should no longer be neglected. These are performances which compare favorably to his best of those composed by Beethoven and Chopin. Decca's sound quality is absolutely first rate.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How could you skip this one if you are a Tchaikovsky lover?, September 30, 2003

By 

"heavybug" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tchaikovsky: The Seasons (Audio CD)

This is a truly wonderfully played CD, each month of the year is granted with such a character. Vladimir Ashkenazy was the man, he has put such a lively romatic touch to the music, especially to the months of January and June. Give the CD a try, you won't be disappointed.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MOIS MUSICAUX, May 17, 2011

By 

DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tchaikovsky: The Seasons (Audio CD)

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.