January - At the fireside
February - Carnival
March - Song of the lark
April - Snowdrop
May - Starlit nights
June - Barcarolle
July - Song of the reaper
August - The harvest
September - The hunt
October - Autumn song
November - Troika
December - Christmas

Strike up a conversation with anyone about the music of Tchaikovsky and it inevitably revolves around the 1812 Overture, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker or his Symphony No. 6, but very rarely does anyone ever bring up his works for piano solo. And yet his Album pour enfants, Op. 39 and this Les saisons, Op. 37b are both well represented with over 50 pianists having released a recording of the latter. Mind you it isn't piano music on the scale of Beethoven's Sonatas or the harmonic depth of a Chopin Nocturne, but each of the twelve individual pieces is a simple and charming portrayal of everyday events that take place during a calendar year. And as the booklet notes explain their simplicity was very likely part of Tchaikovsky's concept. They were to be published in sync with the calendar year in the musical magazine Nuvellist, which existed in Imperial Russia from 1840 to 1906. So each and every month during 1876, people who read that magazine were presented with a new piano piece to learn. Quite an ingenious marketing scheme that I wish was still around today.

Tchaikovsky more than likely had children in mind when he wrote this cycle as it reminds me of Robert Schumann's Kinderszenen with its evocative charm and colorful depiction of seasonal traditions. Russian pianist Andrey Yaroshinsky certainly brings out each piece's strong melodic character and expressive warmth throughout, and well captures their inherent Russian melancholy, particularly apparent in June's Barcarolle and October's Autumn Song. Despite their lack of technical demands, Yaroshinsky always seems to make them sound more intricate and involved than they appear to be at first glance.

PlayClassics is a young record label which I believe was launched as recently as 2012. They employ a recording technique they call TRT Sound (Truthful Recording Technology). With proper and minimal microphone placement, their aim is to capture the sound of the instruments "as is", without subtracting or adding anything. The result is a sound with unprecedented naturalness. From my own perspective, it sits the listener on the piano bench at the keyboard, which results in a very tangible sound.