Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture - Program Note

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, Op. 49

If not for Mily Balakirev, Tchaikovsky might not have composed one of his best known orchestral masterworks. As leader of the 19th-century cadre of Russian nationalist composers now known as The Mighty Five, Balakirev suggested the subject of Romeo and Juliet to Tchaikovsky in the summer of 1869, and even proposed a four-bar opening for the work and several ideas for its treatment based on his own reading of the play. Tchaikovsky composed the first version in six weeks, readying it to premiere in March 1870 under the baton of Nicolai Rubinstein. After that, he continuously re-approached the work, both in terms of its final structure, and in his relationship to the play’s thematic content. The piece remained on his desk for another decade, with the languorous chorale style prelude appearing as a new element by 1872, and the final form resulting from his renewed interest in the play after the unfortunate collapse of his brief marriage to Antonina Miliukova, a former student. In 1878 he seriously considered expanding his ideas to operatic scale, though in the end he allowed his Fantasy Overture to stand alone in a fully revised version of 1880—the one commonly performed today.

That may be just as well, for in the overture’s roughly twenty minute duration Tchaikovsky presents a narrative of focused, emotional magnitude. The ensuing sonata-allegro structure serves as a perfect vehicle for the juxtaposition of two extremes: the intense feud between the Montagues and Capulets and the love that grows within its midst. After the first blossoming of the lovers’ theme, the development section pits the primary motives against each other in much the same fashion as the characters of the drama, seamlessly leading back into an abbreviated reprise of the energetic fight music. If Tchaikovsky was dutiful in following Balakirev’s guidance until then, it is in the return of the love theme where his own masterful instincts are most apparent. In contrast to the somewhat muted first statement of this now- immortalized melody, he unleashes the full orchestral rendering that we may have expected on the first encounter. The music of the feud creeps back as the two materials combine, bringing the fate of the star-crossed lovers even more into relief, and a sharp timpani crash initiates an epilogue—the clear equivalent to the death scene. The piece closes with the same slow chorale with which it began, coupled with a plaintive final statement of the love theme as a kind of eulogy on the needless sacrifice of two innocents to the antipathy between their families.