Symfoni nr 2

In Spring 1871, by now in his sixth year as a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, Tchaikovsky's financial situation finally began to improve. He was able to acquire his own home after living in lodgings for many years, giving him the freedom and peace to compose.

Symphony No. 2 is a prime example of Tchaikovsky’s penchant for borrowing melodies and themes from folk music. Much of the composition took place during the summer of 1872 on his sister’s estate in Ukraine and each of the movements contains quotations from Ukrainian folk songs – or pastiches of the same. The symphony consequently acquired the nicknamed the Little Russian, the colloquial name for the western and central areas of Ukraine under the Russian Empire. The symphony premiered in Moscow in February 1873 to acclaim from audience and critics alike. This success led to other commissions, including an invitation for Tchaikovsky to write the music for the opera The Snow Maiden and the fantasia The Tempest, after Shakespeare's play.

Symphony No. 2 is imbued with joie de vivre, with almost no whiff of the melancholia that so often marks his symphonies. The final movement is extremely catchy and it feels as if Igor Stravinsky may well have had this music at the back of his mind 38 years later when composing the finale to his ballet, The Firebird