Orchestral Suite No. 4 Mozartiana (Tchaikovsky)

The Orchestral Suite No. 4, Op. 61, more commonly known as Mozartiana, is an orchestral suite by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, written in 1887 as a tribute to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on the 100th anniversary of that composer's opera Don Giovanni. Because this suite consists of four orchestrations of piano pieces by (or in one case, based on) Mozart, Tchaikovsky did not number this suite with his previous three suites for orchestra. Instead, he considered it a separate work entitled Mozartiana. Nevertheless, it is usually counted as No. 4 of his orchestral suites.

Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere himself, in Moscow in November 1887. It was the only one of his suites he conducted, and only the second at whose premiere he was present.

This suite is scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and trumpets, four horns, timpani, cymbals, glockenspiel, harp and strings.

Mozartiana is in four movements and lasts approximately 20 minutes.

Tchaikovsky's treatment of Mozart's work here was both faithful and, as David Brown phrases it, "affectionate." He took the music as it stood and endeavoured to present it in the best possible light—this is, in late 19th-century guise. His intent was to win greater appreciation among his contemporaries for Mozart's lesser known works.

Tchaikovsky had always held Don Giovanni in the greatest awe, and regarded Mozart as his musical God. The great soprano Pauline Viardot-Garcia, who was the teacher of Tchaikovsky's one-time unofficial fiancée Désirée Artôt (and whom she may have persuaded not to go through with her plan to marry the composer), had purchased the manuscript of the opera in 1855 in London, and kept it in a shrine in her home, where it was visited by many people. Tchaikovsky visited her when he was in Paris in June 1886, and said that when looking at the manuscript, he was "in the presence of divinity". So it is not surprising that the centenary of the opera in 1887 would inspire him to write something honouring Mozart. (Curiously, the title role in the centenary production of Don Giovanni in Prague was sung by the man who replaced Tchaikovsky in Désirée Artôt's affections, her husband, the Spanish baritone Mariano Padilla y Ramos.) He wrote the work in the summer of 1887 at a spa town in the Caucasus, where he went to cure a supposed liver complaint.

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