Symphony No. 1 in g minor, “Winter Dreams,” Op. 13

Quick Facts

• Written between 1866-68; revised in 1874
• Premiered in Moscow in 1868 with the Russian Musical Society conducted by Nikolay Rubenstein¹
• Tchaikovsky also dedicated Symphony No. 1 to Nikolay Rubenstein, who was incredibly influential in promoting Tchaikovsky’s works as an emerging composer. Fun fact – Tchaikovsky dedicated more works to Nikolay than anyone else.²
• Names of the four movements:
  1. Daydreams on a Winter Journey. Allegro tranquillo
  2. Land of Gloom, Land of Mist. Adagio cantabile ma non tanto
  3. Scherzo. Allegro scherzando giocoso
  4. Finale. Andante lugubre – Allegro moderato – Allegro maestoso

About the Piece

• According to correspondence at the time between the composer and friends/ family, writing this first symphony was incredibly arduous and frustrating for Tchaikovsky. According to the composer’s brother, Modest:
  • “No other work cost him such effort and suffering… Despite painstaking and arduous work, its composition was fraught with difficulty, and while pressing ahead with the symphony, Pyotr Ilyich’s nerves became more and more frayed. As a result of this exceptionally hard work he began to suffer from insomnia, and the sleepless nights paralyzed his creative energies. At the end of July all this erupted into a terrible nervous attack, the like of which he never experienced again during his lifetime… The most distressing symptoms of this illness were dreadful hallucinations, which were so frightening that they resulted in a feeling of complete numbness in all his extremities”
  • Interestingly, later on, Tchaikovsky claimed this work as one of his favorites: “I like this symphony very much, and deeply regret that it’s had such an unhappy existence.”
• Tchaikovsky revised his original score in 1874 (which has now become the standard version) before its publication in 1875.
• Other than the titles given to the first two movements of the work, Tchaikovsky left no programmatic explanation for his “Winter Dreams” symphony. There may have originally been an accompanying program that didn’t make it to the final version of the piece.³
• Listen for: the 4th movement, based on a Russian folk song, “I will plant, young one.”⁴

1. “Symphony No.1, Op.13 (Tchaikovsky, Pyotr),” IMSLP, accessed February 9, 2024, https://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.1,Op.13(Tchaikovsky,_Pyotr).
2. “Nikolay Rubinstein,” Tchaikovsky Research (2023), accessed February 9, 2024, https://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Nikolay_Rubinstein.
3. Ibid.
4. “Winter Daydreams: A Guide to Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1,” Houston Symphony (2017), accessed February 9, 2024, https://houstonsymphony.org/32544-2/.