Fantasy for solo harp from Eugene Onegin

Program Note:

Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s (1840-93) theater works, both opera and ballet, are highlights in the entire Russian repertory. Among the operas, there is none better than Eugene Onegin. Tchaikovsky composed the entire three-act opera during the final months of 1877, arguably the most traumatic year of his life. He had not thought Pushkin’s verse novel sufficient in plot to support an opera, but he soon realized that a brilliant treatment of character development could outweigh the poem’s dramatic banality. He was also fascinated by those same hackneyed plot elements (a debonair cad who eventually regrets his earlier disdain of a simple girl’s utter devotion), for they touched on a matter too close to home. Tchaikovsky struggled to accept his homosexuality. That struggle was intensified by Tsarist Russia’s harsh penalties for such behavior. At the exact moment he considered setting Onegin, he entered into a disastrous marriage to a former student, Antonina Miliukova. Within six weeks he had fled from her and was on the verge of suicidal breakdown; she was apparently oblivious to his torment. Clearly he regretted his treatment of Antonina, but he knew just as surely that being with her was impossible. The novel’s romantic tension between Onegin and naïve Tatyana provided Tchaikovsky a creative outlet for his own anguish.

The Fantasie on Themes from Eugene Onegin, penned by Ekaterina Walter-Kühne (1870-1930), has become one of the staples of the harp repertory. It begins with quotations of the opera’s overture before shifting the bulk of attention to the beloved waltz theme from Act II. Three different appearances of the waltz are separated by virtuosic cadenzas that pass through short snippets from Tchaikovsky’s material. Such arrangements for keyboard or harp brought concert music into the growing world of the domestic salon.

(c) Jason Stell