Beschrijving

The “Slavonic March”, Tchaikovsky’s opus 31, was commissioned in 1876 by the Russian Musical Society for performance at a Red Cross charity concert for the victims of the Serbo-Turkish War. In his work Tchaikovsky made use of Serbian folk tunes and the Russian national anthem. It is not known when exactly he began work on the composition. In a letter to his brother Modest dated September 17th 1876, he writes: “Meanwhile my compositional activities have ground to a halt. Since returning I’ve written next to nothing.” But according to the information given in the manuscript, the work was completed on September 25th. On the title page of the original manuscript Tchaikovsky wrote: “Serbo-Russian march on Slavonic folk themes”. After the first performance on November 5th 1876, he wrote to a lady friend: “Last Saturday my Serbo-Russian march was played here for the first time, which produced a whole storm of patriotic enthusiasm.” Apart from the version for symphony orchestra Tchaikovsky produced a further version for piano in the same year. This edition was published under the title “Slavonic March”.