PIOTR ILYICH TCHAÏKOVSKI Symphony No.1 op.13 "Winter Daydreams". The Tempest op.18 Pablo Heras-Casado, Orchestra of St. Luke's

Daydreams and Tempest.
‘I am Russian, Russian, Russian!’, Tchaikovsky declared. And it was the Russian winter, its contemplative melancholy and picturesque excitement, that inspired the First Symphony of the 26-year-old composer, which features a genuine folksong in its rousing finale. Yet he was also a well-read cosmopolitan, as may be seen in the splendid and rarely recorded Symphonic Fantasia on Shakespeare’s Tempest, composed a few years later, in 1873, and performed with great success at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1878.