Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed The Seasons, Op. 37a in 1876. It is a set of twelve short pieces for solo piano, originally published with the french title Les Saisons. Each piece represents a different month of the year in the northern hemisphere. Excerpts of this suite have always been popular: Troika (November) was a favourite encore of Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Barcarolle (June) was enormously popular and appeared in many different arrangements. A standard rendition of the twelve pieces takes around 43 minutes.
