I’ve wanted to make a string orchestra version of Tchaikovsky’s Third String Quartet for almost as long as I’ve known the piece.  Growing up in the USA, most musicians I knew seemed to only know of “‘the’ Tchaikovsky String Quartet”, by which they meant his First Quartet with its famous Andante Cantabile. I may have seen some reference to the existence of other Tchaikovsky quartets, but they were always spoken of with suspicion and condescension.

In the early 1990’s I had a very sudden Tchaikovsky Quartet awakening when I heard the Vermeer Quartet play Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet no. 2. Not only was it a good piece, it was a much better piece (in my opinion) than the First. As it happened, the Vermeer were preparing to record the work, but to tide me over until their recording became available, I went out and bought the Borodin Quartet’s EMI recording (the later one with Mikhail Kopelman playing first violin), part of a box set of all three quartets and Souvenir de Florence. Although the Vermeer at that time in their arc were hard to beat, the Borodin’s recording of the Second Quartet certainly didn’t suffer by comparison. In fact, it quickly became a favorite.

Eventually, I realised that, as much as I loved the Second Quartet, I owed it to Tchaikovsky, and possibly to myself, to put DISC 2 in the CD player and see what the Third Quartet was all about.

The rest, as they say, is history

I have a feeling that over the next twenty years, DISC 1 only got out of the jewel case a couple more times.

I think it was Rudolf Barshai’s string orchestra treatment of Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet that first made me aware of the possibilities of arranging a string quartet for string orchestra. It can yield a musically interesting result, never better than the original, but different in very cool ways. There is Schoenberg’s own string orchestra version of his Second String Quartet which I’ve conducted once, and Mahler’s arrangements of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden and Beethoven’s Serioso Quartet. I’ve tried my hand a few times at this, most memorably with Viktor Ullmann’s Third Quartet. Leonard Bernstein, Wilhelm Furtwangler and Felix Weingartner all tried their hands at arranging various Beethoven string quartets, too.

There were a few reasons that Tchaikovsky’s Third String Quartet seemed like a good candidate for the string orchestra treatment

1. It’s a dramatic and passionate work on a symphonic scale that can definitely make good use of the power of expanded forces
2. I love Tchaikovsky’s string orchestra music and wish there were more of it.
3. I don’t play in a string quartet any more and I miss the piece

Well, we’re nearly there. These things get more fraught as the big day approaches. This kind of arrangement is a much simpler proposition than something like my orchestration of the Brahms A Major Piano Quartet. It’s mostly a matter of writing a bass part and deciding what should be tutti and what should be solo. Because there are relatively few decisions to make, each decision counts for a lot.

There are quite a few dramatic differences between various editions of this piece, but the Urtext version (reprinted by Dover!) is pretty good. I wanted to check a few things from it which are different from most other editions, and I was able to find a scan of the manuscript. Not only does the Urtext stand up pretty well to scrutiny, I came away once again astounded by Tchaikovsky’s genius.

Looking at a manuscript is always kind of awe-inspiring, but Tchaikovsky’s score is so clear, it’s kind of mind boggling. More than almost any other major composer he seems to be victimised by all sorts of editors who think they can improve his music by changing his articulations, cutting things and messing with the text. I’ve written in these pages before about the regular assaults unleashed against his beautiful Violin Concerto. How can anyone look at a manuscript like this and doubt the mastery of this guy!!?!?!?!

I’d like to think that whatever my arrangement sounds like, the hours spent taking out all the editorial BS in the parts will mean that although we’re playing the piece with forces I doubt he ever contemplated using, we’re otherwise being far truer to his wishes than most performances using the printed editions full of bogus slurs and crazy added accents. History will decide!