Monday Musicale with the Maestro – June 29, 2020 – Tchaikovsky’s Military March in B-flat Major
Celebrating Maestro Curry’s 50 years conducting
& 11 years with the Durham Symphony!
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Many thanks to Maestro Curry as we bring you our 11th weekly installment of Monday Musicale with the Maestro! If you like what you’re seeing, please donate and let us know! This week we are tipping our DSO hat and passing it in honor of Maestro Curry. No matter the amount, we are grateful for your support and excited to bring you our music!
Monday Musicale with the Maestro
Completed on May 17, 1893, the Military March in B-flat Major (written for piano) was Tchaikovsky’s last instrumental composition. He began work on it the very day he finished his magnum opus, the Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique”.
The request for the piece came from a cousin in a military regiment who wanted the composer to write a march for the regiment’s band. Tchaikovsky, being unfamiliar with band scoring, wrote the piece for piano and suggested that the group’s bandmaster create a version for his group. “It can be augmented without changing the essence of it,” Tchaikovsky wrote, noting that “the harmony and melody must remain intact.”
Here is a recording of the original version for piano:
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Provided to YouTube by Warner Classics
Military March in B-Flat Major · Viktoria Postnikova
Tchaikovsky: Complete Piano Works
℗ 1993 Erato Disques, a Warner Music UK Division
Piano: Viktoria Postnikova Composer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
I have been devoted to the music of Tchaikovsky since before my conducting debut (March 17, 1970), when at age fifteen I conducted music from Swan Lake. But I did not discover this completely unknown Military March until 2014–when I immediately fell in love with it. It was obvious to me that the work was not yet “finished.” As opposed to Tchaikovsky’s other grandiose marches, this one lacked an introduction and a suitably imposing ending. So with the help of a commission from the North Carolina Symphony Association, I decided to create a version for full symphony orchestra that would do justice to Tchaikovsky’s musical “torso” for the piece. It was premiered by the North Carolina Symphony on January 30, 2015.
For this adaptation I have supplied the Military March with an introduction, transitional material, and a coda. The creation of these additional eighty bars involved some composition on my part and the re-shaping of some excerpts from some of Tchaikovsky’s less familiar works, including two of the fanfares from his incidental music for Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the “Coronation Scene” from his opera about Joan of Arc, The Maid of Orleans. My goal was to organically integrate these materials with the original, thus creating a symphonic version of Tchaikovsky’s last creative endeavor. In other words, it was to be an old/new piece by Tchaikovsky, written with a little help from a friend.
A reviewer from CVNC.org, the late Paul D. Williams, said of my adaptation:
The resulting sound was “pure” exciting Tchaikovsky. Here was a pleasing collaboration between composer and later arranger, a culmination that deserves wide exposure. It’s just possible that the great Russian composer never had a better friend than William Henry Curry.
Here is the Durham Symphony Orchestra’s performance of the work from our April 15, 2017 concert The Mystery of the Last Days and Last Masterpieces of Tchaikovsky.
William Henry Curry
Music Director, Durham Symphony Orchestra
Durham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maestro William Henry Curry
Military March in B-flat – Tchaikovsky, arr.& orch. William Henry Curry
The Carolina Theater Concert
April 15, 2017