Dumka Op.59

Description

Written by Tchaikovsky in 1886, this solo piano piece is subtitled Russian Rustic Scene and was dedicated to Antoine Marmontel, a piano professor at the Paris Conservatoire. The dumka is a genre that grew out of lament-like folk songs from Ukraine and other Slavic lands, and it is marked by the alternation of brooding passages with sudden bursts of energy.

It is in C minor, lasts about 9 minutes 37 seconds and has 4,279 notes, making it one of the larger solo works on the site. Melancholy slow sections alternate with fierce passages like a folk dance, expanding the character of the dumka into a large design. The range spans nearly seven octaves, from B-flat 0 up to G7, covering almost the whole of an 88-key piano.

It is rated advanced. The slow sections call for balance between the singing melody and the chords; the fast ones for the technique and stamina to drive through chords and wide leaps without losing tempo. Whether the contrast between stillness and motion comes across clearly is what the performance rests on. At nearly ten minutes, practise section by section with the A-B loop, and for the fast passages slow the playback and check each hand's movement with the hand colours before building them up.

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