Jacopo Rivani & Orchestra Arcangelo Corelli - Tchaikovsky: Children's Album Op. 39, Serenade for Strings Op. 48 (2021)

Romantic and late-Romantic musicological literature tended to conceive the history of music in terms of a succession of Great Men (women were normally ignored), frequently neglecting the relationship between a genius composer and his or her cultural context, as well as the aesthetics of the era in dialogue with that of the preceding generations. In the case of P. I. Tchaikovsky, this approach is even more flawed than in that of other composers. Undeniably, the great Russian musician was a genius in his own right. Equally undeniably, his music can hardly be understood in isolation from its cultural framework, and, in particular, from the composer’s interest in the music of earlier musicians of the Classical and Romantic era.