Major Classical/Romantic Era composers of the 17- and 18-century such as Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, etc., published piano solo pieces that are the gems of culture and civilization. Retrospectively, there are a few notable names that perused the symphonic form almost exclusively in addition to the occasional opera, such as Richard Strauss. Wouldn’t it be lovely if only they had composed at least one Romantic masterpiece for us?
Actually, there is a major piano solo composition largely overlooked by the populace, and composed by none other than Tchaikovsky.
No classical music fans finds the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky less than a core part of her/his collection, and the swashbuckling melodies and orchestration of his music continues to cement the crowning, mandatory status of the composer in the hearts of music lovers worldwide for generations. Popular household works such as the Piano Concerto No. 1, the Violin Concerto, the ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, as well as orchestral showpieces like the 1812 Overture, Variations on a Rococo Theme, Romeo and Juliet, etc, are forever ingrained into the world culture and each of our individual psyche. There is, however, a brilliant piece of Tchaikovsky’s composition that somehow eluded mainstream consumption, his The Seasons.
Perhaps the Tchaikovsky work is overshadowed by the overwhelmingly popular Vivaldi The Four Seasons, to which the Russian work seemingly invites comparison, but it is no excuse to cast Tchaikovsky’s work aside. Granted there is a body of work by the beloved composer that is also of minor celebritory status, such as the Second and Third Symphony, the Piano Concerto No. 2, etc, but The Seasons is not one of those.
Originally a piano work, The Seasons is also performed in orchestral arrangements, and it is most interesting and refreshing to have the luxury of hearing it in both genres. For this is the only instance where we get to experience the maestro’s orchestral work in its original piano form as well. And besides the fact that it is hardly less eloquent than Chopin’s Scherzos, or Beethoven’s Sonatas, The Seasons with its lyricism and deeply romantic sensibility actually sounds more modern and expressive than many contemporary compositions.
In The Seasons, we get to hear Tchaikovsky at his less flamboyant but continuingly towering self, for the twelve-movement piece, composed between 1875-76, was created to satiate the monthly subscribers of a Russian magazine for twelve months and was panned by his critics as less representative of the better of his efforts. But The Seasons was composed between the completion of the First Piano Concerto and the ongoing work on Swan Lake, so we get to experience a work created by the number one Russian composer of all time in one of his most creative periods. Consider this, in the space between the piano concerto and the ballet, both historically and musically foremost, the composer wrote The Seasons. Now if you believe you’ve heard enough recordings of the Tchaikovsky Swan Lake, the Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, even including the seminal Symphony No. 6, then The Seasons is more than a mere palate cleanser. It offers a view into a landscape both familiar and yet fresh, brimming with energy seemingly left over from the afterglow of events monumental.
The Beethoven Moonlight and Liszt Liebestraum are nice, but they hardly hold a candle to the 40-minute Tchaikovsky. The work is consisted of twelve individual pieces, each represents a month in a year. In the midst of the twelve pieces is the “June Barcarolle” and the “November Troika”, the former being a constant concert favorite and the latter a Rachmaninoff personal encore showpiece. Recent recordings of The Seasons from Decca with Yunchan Lim in 2025, Deutsche Grammophon with Bruce Liu in 2024, Erato with Mikhail Pletnev in 2005, for instance, benefitting from latest recording technologies, displayed the Doctor Zhivago-like countryside landscape, one resplendent in spring flower resurgence in one instance, and a leisurely walk with soft summer breeze in the next, interjected later by a expressive, contemplative fall and a majestic winter.
The days of moonlights, appassionnatas, elises and all the rest are nice, but the Tchaikovsky The Seasons is the master’s own through and through, so thrillingly contemporary and romantic, that a sitting of it every now and then satiates the hunger for an almost Hollywood-like lyricism.
Review system
Audience AV frontROW cable system
Cardas Clear Beyond cable system
Aurender AP20 reference all-in-one cache player/DAC/integrated class D amplifier
Aurender N200 cache player
Aurender AP20 (DAC/Preamp Out mode)
Orchard Audio Starkrimson Mono Ultra Premium GaN-FET monoblocks
Pass Laboratories XA200.8 class A monoblocks
Aurender N200 cache player
Bricasti Design M21 DSD DAC
Atma-Sphere MP-1 3.3 tube preamplification system
Pass Laboratories XA200.8 class A monoblocks
Sound Lab M945 electrostatic panels
Acoustic Science Corp. Tubetraps
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