Mélodie (Souvenir d'un lieu cher, op. 42)

The three pieces of Souvenir d'un lieu cher, op. 42, were written in 1878 at Brailov, the estate of Nadezhda von Meck, where Tchaikovsky stayed in his patron's absence; the title refers to the place. The first of them, Mélodie, keeps company with a Meditation that had been composed earlier that year as the slow movement of the Violin Concerto and then discarded when he replaced it with the Canzonetta. Iosif Kotek, who had advised on the concerto's violin writing, was with him at Brailov. Glazunov later orchestrated the set, and it is usually heard in that form.