China, aC oes d

PA et 11 Pe Get on pape

“=

ao om aoe

e-

a

TCHAIKOVSKY

HUGEN ONEGIN excerpts

VISHNEVSKAYA

BELOV

LEMESHEV

PETROV

MK 1557 TCHAIKOVSKY: EUGEN ONEGIN excerpts

| GALINA VISHNEVSKAYA EUGEN BELOV

SERGEI LEMESHEV IVAN PETROV

BOLSHO!I THEATRE ORCHESTRA

BORIS KHAIKIN, conductor

The felicitious combination of Pushkin’s bittersweet poetic romance, HUGEN ONEGIN, with Tchaikovsky’s lyrical music might be regarded as a well-nigh inevitable event. Pushkin’s sentimental work was so fondly read by all cultivated Russians that it was certain to win Tchaikovsky’s favor. Yet the out- pouring of Tchaikovsky’s inspiration is more directly a revela- tion of what the limpid story meant to him, traveling as he was within the heart’s troubled domain. |

In the same year that he began HUGEN ONEGIN, 1877, Tchaikovsky had drifted into matrimony with a young woman who loved him desperately but with whom, he confessed later, “T am not the least in love’. Whether he married out of pity or hope, the separation nine weeks after the wedding was no less poignant for Tchaikovsky that the touching scenes of EUGEN ONEGIN. The pathetically sincere love of Tatiana, whose declaration of love in the “Letter Scene’, (Side One, band 3),

oe (ep. S. e=—. ae wa = ee 5

ope 2 ee)

TA AA, Fibs Iroc ha ee me : |

BOLSHOI THEATRE ORCHESTRA

BORIS KHAIKIN Conductor

he made so affecting, must have seemed very close to his own experience. Also, the kindly but firm answer of Onegin, (Side One, band 4), shunning that “bed of roses’, may have seemed, in the light of Tchaikovsky’s own disaster, a discretion better than valor. The musical result, itself, shows how completely Tchaikovsky was attuned to Pushkin’s nostalgic poetic realism. EUGEN ONEGIN, occupied Tchaikovsky’s travels and “rest” abroad, being completed in 1878. It was first performed at the Maly Theatre in Moscow on March 28, 1879, and becamé his first really popular work for the stage. The practical difficulties of adapting a verse novel were in part solved with the libretto, which Tchaikovsky and Konstantin Shilovsky adapted from Pushkin. For the rest, Tchaikovsky’s unfailing melodic instinct and emotional vitality enabled him to triumph over all artistic problems. The result is one of the most delightful “collabora- tions” of poet and composer in the realm of lyric theatre.

Other operas on MK

EUGEN ONEGIN (Complete) MK 204D

TSAR SALTAN (Complete) MK 206C

PIQUE DAME (Complete) MK 207C

A LIFE FOR THE TSAR (excerpts)..MK 1554

ay?

yy ead Oe in| Pe

e605 OB > PL Pes ie BS - arn

a ed a 0? = = ay om

oe S6e se ey oe ee oo

— =e a ~~ ee :

eae te oo te GD (RG ED ad

oe

33 '/, 06. B MHH.

TY-35 \ XT 558-63 = Bropas rp.-1

H—06463(a) 1-00

Tl. YARMIKOBCKHM. «

XT1 558-63 Bropaa rp.-2

—06464(a) 1-00

n