I Remember All (Tarnovskaya)

The romance I Remember All (Я помню всë) by the Russian composer Yelizaveta Tarnovskaya was arranged for piano duet by Tchaikovsky sometime between 1866 and 1868 (TH 172 ; ČW 406).

Instrumentation

Scored for piano duet (4 hands)

Movements and Duration

There is one section: Andante (75 bars, E-flat major), lasting around 2 to 3 minutes in performance.

History

No information survives regarding the origin of this arrangement, which presumably dates from the period when Tchaikovsky was acquainted with the Tarnovsky family. Shortly after his move to Moscow in January 1866, Tchaikovsky told his brothers that: "My acquaintances have increased somewhat (unfortunately), although they are all good people. Among these, I especially like the Tarnovskys, husband and wife, who are very wealthy people, and terribly fond of music. Madame Tarnovskaya is a famous composer of romances, as performed by [Fyodor] Nikolsky: "I Remember All, "Why", etc. .

Publication

Tchaikovsky's arrangement was published by Jurgenson in 1868. It was included in volume 60 of Tchaikovsky's Complete Collected Works (1971), edited by Georgy Kirkor.

Autographs

Tchaikovsky's manuscript arrangement is now preserved in the Russian National Museum of Music in Moscow (ф. 88, No. 167) [view].

Related Works

Yelizaveta Tarnovskaya's romance I Remember All (Op. 281) was written in the mid–1860s, to words by Aleksey Pleshcheyev (1825–1893). Tchaikovsky's arrangement is based on a transcription of the romance for solo piano by Aleksandr Dubuque (1812–1898), which was also published by Jurgenson in 1868 under the title Romance de Tarnovsky.

Herman Laroche recalled that I Remember All "enjoyed considerable fame in the sixties... and echoed through many hundreds of Russian homes" .