Noctave
The piece
In Tchaikovsky's Album for the Young, this march sends wooden soldiers parading past: a stiff rhythm, dry chords, not a note too many. In D major and in duple time, Moderato, it is played entirely in the treble clef in both hands, in the middle of the keyboard, like a little toy brass band. The piece returns to its theme after a tenser passage, then stops short on a D in octaves.
Everything rests on one rhythmic cell: dotted eighth, sixteenth, eighth, sixteenth rest, sixteenth. Those sixteenths must stay short and exact; the temptation is to soften them into triplets, which turns the whole march to mush. Count in sixteenths at first, four per beat, to put each note in its place. Both hands often play chords or intervals together, and these must start exactly at the same moment. The little chromatic note, the A-sharp brushing against B, is played without weight. At about three notes per second, it is the stiffness of the rhythm, not the speed, that makes the march.