Tchaikovsky, "Romeo & Juliet" Overture

Despite his recurrent depressive episodes, before he was 35 years old Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky had definitively consolidated a career as a composer in Tsarist Russia. Between 1869 – when he was 29 –and 1875, a good number of his best works were released, including the popular Piano Concerto
No. 1, the Second and Third Symphonies, and the overture Romeo and Juliet, the first of his three works of descriptive music based on Shakespeare's dramas. The Tempest would follow, and much later, Hamlet.

First version
Setting to music the immortal tragedy of the lovers of Verona was certainly a good idea. His first intention was to write an opera, but his friend and advisor, Mili Balakirev, leader of the renowned group The Five, thought it would work better as an instrumental drama. To that end, he offered some advice, suggesting the scenes to be worked out and even the key in which they should be written. Too many suggestions for the highly self-critical author that Tchaikovsky was. He only half-heartedly listened. The premiere, in March 1870, went almost unnoticed.

Second version
When, some time later, he learned that the work had been whistled in Vienna and coldly received in Paris, he forced himself to take a closer look at the profuse correspondence exchanged with Balakirev. He wrote a second version, and hastened to publish it. Balakirev agreed that it had improved, but warned that it would have been better to keep it unpublished for a long enough time to await new ideas.

Tchaikovsky, in 1878
(1840 - 1893)

Third version - Fantasy Overture

The leader of The Five was right. Ten years later, Pyotr Ilyich wrote the third version, adding to it the subtitle "Overture-Fantasy". It is the one that today is performed on the stages of the world, surpassing in popularity, by far, the versions that in their time other authors – Berlioz and Prokofiev – made of the tragic love story of Juliet and her Romeo. The work lasts just under 20 min.

In popular culture
The various arrangements of the popular love theme (scene on the balcony: minute 7:45) are counted by the dozen, as well as its presence in the most diverse films and TV shows: in more than one episode it accompanied the never-ending and never-ended love affair between Doña Florinda and Professor Jirafales, in the Mexican series El Chavo del Ocho.

The performance is by The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Dima Slobodeniouk, a Russian conductor based in Finland with a Finnish citizenship.