The Tempest, in F minor, Op. 18 "Fantasy overture"

The piece opens with a hushed, still passage in the strings suggesting a calm sea before the storm. Music associated with the magician Prospero and his powers follows, more mysterious and searching in character. A sudden, dramatic storm passage then erupts, loud and turbulent, with the full orchestra depicting the shipwreck at the center of the play. Out of this drama emerges a warm, songful string melody, quite different in mood from what surrounds it, representing the young love between Miranda and Ferdinand as it blossoms on the island. Lighter, airier woodwind writing suggests the spirit Ariel darting about, while lower, heavier brass and string writing is associated with the earthbound character Caliban. Eventually the storm music returns and subsides, and the piece closes as it began, with the calm sea music restored, giving the whole fantasy a rounded, framed shape.

In the summer of 1873, the influential critic Vladimir Stasov suggested to Tchaikovsky that he write an orchestral work based on Shakespeare's 'The Tempest,' and supplied him with a detailed scene-by-scene outline drawn from the play. Tchaikovsky composed the piece quickly that summer. It was premiered in Moscow in December 1873 under conductor Nikolai Rubinstein and was well received. The work sits alongside Tchaikovsky's other Shakespeare-inspired orchestral pieces, including 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'Hamlet,' as part of his lifelong interest in setting literary drama to purely orchestral music.