Tchaikovsky: Six Romances and Songs, Op. 27 (1875) IV. Evening. Moderato assai (B-flat major)

Tchaikovsky: Six Romances and Songs, Op. 27
(1875)
IV. Evening (Вечер)
Moderato assai (B-flat major)


Tchaikovsky's Six Romances and Songs (Шесть романсов и песен), Op. 27 (TH 98 ; ČW 232-237), were written in March and April 1875 in Moscow.

Instrumentation:
Scored for medium voice (Nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6) or low voice (No. 2), with piano accompaniment.

Movements:

IV. Evening (Вечер) Moderato assai (B-flat major)

Cherry garden near the hut;
Beetles buzz over cherries;
Plowmen are dragging the plow from the field;
And singing girls
Hurry home for supper.

The family is waiting for them, and everything is ready;
The evening star rises
And my daughter serves dinner.
And her mother would say a word to her,
Yes, the nightingale does not give.

Mother laid near the hut
Their little children;
I fell asleep next to them...
Everything calmed down ... one girl,
Yes, the nightingale did not calm down.

Lev Mey (1822–1862), from his poem of the same name (1859) — a translation from the Ukrainian of Taras Shevchenko's (1814–1861) poem The Little Cherry-Orchard (Садок вишневий коло хати) from his cycle In the Casement (В каземат) (1847).

Composition:
The history of these romances is undocumented. They were probably composed sometime between mid/late March (after the Six Romances, Op. 25) and 7/19 April 1875 (the date they were received by Pyotr Jurgenson, as noted on the manuscript).

Performances:
The romance Evening (No. 4) was performed, possibly for the first time, by Aleksandra Svyatlovskaya in Moscow on 17/29 December 1876, at the sixth symphony concert of the Russian Musical Society.

Publication:
The romances were published by Pyotr Jurgenson in May 1875. A new edition, containing the second version of My Spoiled Darling (No. 6), was issued by Jurgenson in August 1892.

The set (including both versions of No. 6) was published in volume 44 of Tchaikovsky's Complete Collected Works (1940), edited by Ivan Shishov and Nikolay Shemanin.

Arrangements:
The romance Do Not Leave Me (No. 3) was orchestrated by Sergey Taneyev in 1891, and this arrangement was published by Pyotr Jurgenson in 1892.

Autographs:
Tchaikovsky's manuscript scores of all six romances are now preserved in the Russian National Museum of Music in Moscow (ф. 88, No. 136).

The same archive also holds Sergey Taneyev's autograph arrangement of Do Not Leave Me (No. 3) for voice and orchestra, containing annotations by Tchaikovsky (ф. 85, No. 38).

Dedication:
All the romances are dedicated to Yelizaveta Lavrovskaya.