[7/6/2012] Preview: A quick musical peek at the place in Italy that really captured Tchaikovsky's heart (continued)

And here's the Duomo in daylight.

HERE THEN IS THE SECOND MOVEMENT OF
TCHAIKOVSKY'S SOUVENIR DE FLORENCE

As I said, were going to hear it first as it was composed, for string sextet, played by the Borodin Quartet in its glory years, with a pair of pretty high-class colleagues. (The "extra" violist and cellist were aptly billed in the original Melodiya-Angel LP release as "special guest artists.") As you listen, bear in mind that the composer thought of this as an ensemble of six solo instruments. After the beautiful fading-away chordal introduction, the first voice we hear sounding the haunting principal theme -- over his colleagues' pizzicato -- is the Borodin's founding first violinist, Rostislav Dubinsky, followed then by the first cellist, which I assume is the Borodin's longtime cellist Valentin Berlinsky.

Afterward, we hear the movement in string-orchestra form as conducted by Sunday Classics' Mr. Dependable, David Zinman.

TCHAIKOVSKY: Souvenir de Florence (Sextet for Strings in D minor), Op. 70:
ii. Adagio cantabile e con moto


Borodin Quartet (Rostislav Dubinsky and Yaroslav Alexandrov, violins; Dmitri Shebalin, viola; Valentin Berlinsky, cello); Genrikh Talalyan, viola; Mstislav Rostropovich, cello. Melodiya/Angel, recorded 1964


Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, David Zinman, cond. Philips, recorded c1976


IN THIS WEEK'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

We'll be taking in -- what else -- the whole of Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence.


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