Tchaikovsky's hidden depths [video 1 min 50 sec]
What more is there to say about Tchaikovsky? Every nook of his private life has been microscopically examined.
The circumstances of his death at the age of 53 have been hotly discussed, the theory that he contracted cholera after recklessly drinking unboiled water vying with claims of suicide.
The horrors of his unwise marriage have been pruriently picked over. The fruitful if bizarre relationship with his benefactress Mme von Meck, conducted purely through letters, has been exhaustively documented and analysed.
More has been written about Tchaikovsky than about any other 19th-century Russian composer, not least by himself, since his published correspondence is so voluminous that it is surprising he found time to write any music at all.
But the strange thing is that Tchaikovsky's reputation as a composer still rests on a small proportion of his output.
There are perennially popular works such as the First Piano Concerto, the overture Romeo and Juliet, the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth symphonies, the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker and, among the operas, Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades.
Beneath this surface, however, there is a reservoir of music seldom tapped in the concert hall, and which gives a much broader idea of Tchaikovsk'’s range beyond the morbid subjectivity of his later symphonies or the sophisticated vulgarity of the 1812 Overture.
Revealing Tchaikovsky, a South Bank series starting next week and jointly mounted by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, should at least help to redress the balance.
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
The circumstances of his death at the age of 53 have been hotly discussed, the theory that he contracted cholera after recklessly drinking unboiled water vying with claims of suicide.
The horrors of his unwise marriage have been pruriently picked over. The fruitful if bizarre relationship with his benefactress Mme von Meck, conducted purely through letters, has been exhaustively documented and analysed.
More has been written about Tchaikovsky than about any other 19th-century Russian composer, not least by himself, since his published correspondence is so voluminous that it is surprising he found time to write any music at all.
But the strange thing is that Tchaikovsky's reputation as a composer still rests on a small proportion of his output.
There are perennially popular works such as the First Piano Concerto, the overture Romeo and Juliet, the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth symphonies, the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker and, among the operas, Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades.
Beneath this surface, however, there is a reservoir of music seldom tapped in the concert hall, and which gives a much broader idea of Tchaikovsk'’s range beyond the morbid subjectivity of his later symphonies or the sophisticated vulgarity of the 1812 Overture.
Revealing Tchaikovsky, a South Bank series starting next week and jointly mounted by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, should at least help to redress the balance.