Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s
Album for the Young, Op 39, is music for children to play. Schumann wrote his
Album for the Young as a relaxation from labour on his opera
Genoveva, and Tchaikovsky composed his in the wake of
Eugene Onegin. Not a composer normally inspired by the piano, he could nearly always think of a good tune.
Maman and the
Waltz are respectively numbers 3 and 9 of the
Album’s sequence of twenty-four pieces.
from notes by Max Harrison © 1986