Tchaikovsky spent the late spring and early summer of 1883 with his brother Anatoly after spending some hectic months before that writing first his opera Mazeppa, then a march and the cantata Moscow for the coronation of Alexander III as tsar.
He spent three months at Podushkino, two of them correcting proofs to Mazeppa but also finding time to sketch out his Second Orchestral Suite.
[6] When Tchaikovsky left Podushkino on September 13 to visit his sister Alexandra at her estate at Kamenka in Ukraine, his priority was to finish this suite.
[2] Unfortunately, working out of this theme in counterpoint which occupies so much of this movement makes it no more appealing for listening than its counterpart in the First Orchestral Suite.
Tone colors became more vivid, contrasts fiercer, backgrounds idiomatically designed as strikingly projected accompaniments.
He worked to refine and detail his sound world to the point that whole parameters of his compositional technique demanded reevaluation.
Second, he absorbed a variety into the main melodic line that had previously been provided by subordinate fragments; this allowed him to make the melody reinforce the extra diversity in color.
In the First Suite was a functional bass line, explicit harmonic support and solid, if stodgy, counterpoint.
This was all replaced with a mercurial polyphony from which a large variety of textures could be imagined, from a single line and two-part counterpoint to tutti chords.
[14] This discrimination is most apparent in the fourth movement, Rêves d'enfant, which contains both the most conventional and most daring music in the entire suite.
Even in the enchantment music of The Sleeping Beauty, which would follow it, there would not be quite the same disquieting sense of the unknown as Tchaikovsky displays here.