Souvenir de Florence, Op. 70

Tchaikovsky had many happy memories of Florence, where he vacationed from time to time. It was there that he chose to stay during the winter of 1890 while working on the rough draft of his opera, The Queen of Spades, which he was able to finish in 44 days. Then, without wasting any time, he set to work again in earnest on a sextet, which he had promised to the St. Petersburg Quartet Society.

In Tchaikovsky’s music, the instruments are not always on equal terms. He never venerated to any degree the contrapuntal style of the German Classicists, often preferring to showcase one instrument for an extended period while using the others as accompaniment. The Sextet’s first movement (Allegro con Spirito) is a rondo, in which the principal subject is first introduced by the first violin while the five other instruments fill in with an undulating accompaniment. This is also the case for the expressive subordinate theme, where again the first violin is accompanied by the others, taking on, at the same time, the flavor of a Florentine street serenade.