In 1876, while completing the ballet score for Swan Lake, Tchaikovsky composed The Seasons, a series of atmospheric tone paintings for solo piano. Commissioned by the publisher, Nikolay Bernard, the brief pieces were published on the first day of each month in the St. Petersburg music journal, Nuvellist.
Set in D minor, Tchaikovsky’s October submission, Autumn Song, is quiet and melancholy. It accompanies a poem by Tolstoy which describes yellow windswept leaves. The interpretive marking is Andante doloroso e molto cantabile (“moderately slow, sorrowful, and very song-like”). Moving into an elegiac major, the middle section unfolds as a dialogue between higher and lower voices. There is a ballet-like sense of grace and motion throughout. The final bars fade away into despondent gloom, and drift off with a single lonely descending melodic line.
Autumn Song was played at the funeral of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. This performance, recorded on April 29, 2016, features German pianist Olga Scheps:
Autumn Song (October):
The autumn, falling on our poor orchard,
The yellow leaves are flying in the wind.
–Alexey Tolstoy
Featured Image: “Golden Autumn” (1895), Isaac Levitan