St. Valentine's Day

by Misha V. Stefanuk

Download the sheet music

When I was asked about seven months ago to be a monthly columnist for Creative Keyboard, I got very excited. The chance to be heard on a regular basis is rare and extraordinary in contemporary music life. So when it happened, I started to think about all the people I know who did similar things. There was a music critic for New York Times I have met, interviewers from the Russian Music Paper, Nashville Banner, Moscow Pullman News, and my amazing music history teacher Ekaterina Tsareva, who wrote program notes for the Grand Hall of Moscow Conservatory.

However, the first person who came to mind was Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, who in 1876 was commissioned by St. Petersburg magazine, Nouvelliste, to write one piano piece per month. The twelvepiece cycle represents the never-ending reappearance of life. Moscow Conservatory as well as Moscow Conservatory School from which I graduate, is named after Tchaikovsky. The two largest Moscow concert halls are the grand hall of Tchaikovsky Conservatory and Tchaikovsky Hall, and Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow is the greatest competition in the world that started the careers of such pianists as Barry Douglas, Mikhail Pletnev and Van Clibern.

As far as I know the writing of a twelve-piece monthly piano composition for a publication has not been repeated yet, and the idea of following in Tchaikovsky’s footsteps sounds simply too fantastic to resist. So, here is the second piece from my cycle The Seasons op.104: