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Birthday anniversary of Peter I. Tchaikovsky, composer and conductor
With all my heart I wish that
my music expanded,
that the number of people,
who love it,
find consolation and support
in it grew.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky
April 25 (May 7), 1840 in the small town of Votkinsk, Vyatka province, in the family of a mining engineer, chief of the Kama-Votkinsk plant was born the great Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
The Tchaikovskys often held musical evenings. Mother of the future composer Alexandra greatly influenced the creation of the musical atmosphere in the house. She was a great lover of music, sang and played the piano a little bit. At the age of four, Pyotr was already learning to play the piano; three years later he was already reading music better than his teacher and wrote his own childhood impressions, and another year later Tchaikovsky played the piano like an adult.
In 1846, the family of Tchaikovsky moved to Alapaevsk, and then, a year later to St. Petersburg. At the age of 10, Pyotr Tchaikovsky was sent to study at the St. Petersburg Law School, after which he was appointed to the Department of Justice. All the while, Peter Tchaikovsky continued to play music, taking music lessons with the best teachers in St. Petersburg. In letters to his sister Tchaikovsky wrote: "They made me an official, a bad one. I try as much as possible to improve, to engage in the service more seriously and ... at the same time to study the general bass." In early 1862, Tchaikovsky decided to get a professional musical education, quit the service and entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
At the conservatory his teachers were: Professor N. Zaremba and the famous pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein. One of the first important works of Tchaikovsky was an overture for symphony orchestra, inspired by a drama of A. Ostrovsky "The Storm" (1864). At the same time the composer wrote the overture in F Major (1865), "Characteristic Dances", cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra to Schiller’s ode "For Joy" (graduation thesis), several chamber works.
Having graduated from the Conservatory in St. Petersburg, Tchaikovsky started working as a composer in Moscow. In 1866, he became a professor of musical class of the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society, and in the autumn of the same year - a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. In Moscow, Pyotr met with a number of prominent Russian musicians, writers and poets, he attended an artistic circle of Alexander Ostrovsky. In 1866, Tchaikovsky wrote his first symphony and began working on the opera "Voivod", which premiered in 1869. Taking part in the musical life of Moscow, Tchaikovsky regularly appeared in the press as a music critic, he worked as a music reviewer of the "Modern Chronicle" and "Russian Gazette."
In February 1873, the Maly Theatre in Moscow hosted the premiere of "Snow Maiden" by Ostrovsky with Tchaikovsky’s music. In May 1875, the Bolshoi Theatre staged an opera by Pyotr, "Oprichnik", and in February 1877 the premiere of the ballet "Swan Lake" took place.
In 1877, having gone through heavy spiritual crisis, Tchaikovsky left the Conservatory and went abroad, living mostly in Switzerland and Italy. At that time, financial support and correspondence with the patron and lover of music Nadezhda von Meck played an important role in the composer’s life. In those years Pyotr created the 4th Symphony and the opera "Eugene Onegin", which premiered in Moscow in March 1879. In 1884, for the Overture-Fantasia “Romeo and Juliet" Tchaikovsky was awarded the Glinka’s prize.
From 1885, Pyotr lived and worked in the vicinity of Klin, in the village of Maidanovo, Frolovskoye. In 1892, he settled in the Klin. In the late 1880s, he performed a lot as a conductor in Russia and abroad; gave a series of concerts in Leipzig, Hamburg, Berlin, Prague, Paris, London, conducting his own works. In 1891, he traveled with concerts in the United States. In 1892, Pyotr was elected a corresponding member of the Paris Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1893 - an honored doctor of the Cambridge University.
In the late 1880s - early 1890s, Tchaikovsky created a number of great works that became classics of the world, among them - operas "Enchantress", "Queen of Spades", "Iolanta", ballets "Sleeping Beauty" and "Nutcracker", 5th and 6th "Pathetique" Symphonies, the symphony "Manfred", Overture-Fantasy "Hamlet", the Suite for Orchestra "Mozartiana", 3rd concerto for piano and orchestra, string sextet "Souvenir de Florence", several cycles of piano pieces and songs.
Tchaikovsky’s creative work was widely recognized even during the life of the composer and has become an integral part of the advanced Russian culture.
The concert on 16 (28) October 1893, when Tchaikovsky conducted the first time his sixth symphony, was the final one for the composer. October 25 (November 6), Tchaikovsky died of cholera in St. Petersburg and was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.
Lit.: Альшванг А. А. Опыт анализа творчества П. И. Чайковского (1864-1878). М.; Л., 1951; Асафьев Б. В. П. И. Чайковский: его жизнь и творчество. Пг., 1922; Туманина Н. В. Чайковский: великий мастер 1878-1893. М., 1968; Чайковский М. И. Жизнь Петра Ильича Чайковского. М.; Лейпциг. 1903.
Based on the Presidential Library’s materials: