Tchaïkovsky's first Quartet is chiefly remembered in connection with the Andante, which makes a peculiar appeal to the imagination. Though the thematic basis is evidently derived from folk-music, and the tones of the muted instruments are such as one associates with "soft Lydian airs" that merely play upon the senses without further significance, there is in this movement a strange mystical exaltation that is not often met with in Tchaïkovsky. It sounds like a dream of the shepherds who watched their flocks by night and heard the angels sing, or an illustration of some kindred theme in which a homely and pastoral note is associated with devout and joyous feeling. It is the movement that so greatly moved Count Tolstoy when, in company with the composer, he heard a performance of it, also led by Dr. Brodsky. The rest of this beautiful and zestful work causes one to wonder how the composer was able so early in his career to make stringed instruments speak with such free, ready, and natural eloquence. [Sidenote: =Tchaïkovsky Trio in A Minor.= _February 26, 1903._] Most astonishing are the comments that one hears and reads occasionally on such "In Memoriam" pieces as Tchaïkovsky's noble Trio, written in honour of Nicolas Rubinstein--brother of the more famous Anton and a pianist of nearly equal eminence. The psychological basis of this Trio is of exceptional clearness; it is probably clearer than in any other composition of similar extension. Yesterday, Mr. Siloti played the pianoforte part at these concerts for the second if not for the third time. Frequenters have therefore enjoyed unusually good opportunities of becoming acquainted with the music, which we regard as on the whole the best example of Tchaïkovsky's chamber composition. As in Schubert's "Wanderer Fantasie," the centre of the whole is the theme of the second movement--a beautiful and expressive strain that, in the composer's imagination, evidently symbolised the personality of his lost friend. The ensuing Variations--which include a waltz, a mazurka, and others that are anything but sombre in character--range back over scenes and memories connected with that personality, the composer now giving himself up to lively characterisation, and now thrown back into an elegiac mood by the returning consciousness of the friend's death. Occasionally the two moods are mingled, as in that part of the waltz where the dainty dalliance of the pianoforte part is accompanied by the tragic variant of the central theme in the strings. The opening movement, "pezzo elegiaco," is dominated by that tragic variant which, at the very outset, is given out with mighty eloquence by the richest tones of the 'cello--a wailing complaint that recurs in many different forms and informs all three movements in one way or another. Analysing the composition, therefore, not with reference to musical technicalities, but psychologically, we find it to consist of three main