Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 🎼🎹🇬🇧

4 T

In celebration of the 182nd anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s birth in 1840

Retrato de Tchaikovski por Kuznetsov, 1893

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer – Born on 7/5/1840 and celebrating this year his 182nd anniversary, portrayed here by the painter Nikolai Kuznetsov in 1893, one year before his death, when the composer was 53 years old.

In contrast to other Russian composers his contemporaries, known as the Five, Tchaikovsky developed his own cosmopolitan style that included some nationalist elements, but was also more inclined to a classicist inspiration, especially admiring Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. These musical influences gave his compositions an international aspect, while maintaining a clear inspiration from the popular Russian tradition.

The Nutcracker is one of the three famous ballets composed by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. The ballet premiered on December 18, 1892 at the Mariinski Theatre in St. Petersburg, the capital of imperial Russia. It is based on Alexandre Dumas’ version, father, of Hoffmann’s children’s tale, which due to its theme, is traditionally staged in the Christmas season.

Tchaikovsky’s portrait, 1893

At the beginning of the last year of life he performs a last concert tour, then begins writing his last symphony Pathétique, but, before closing it, he uses the material of the abandoned symphony in E flat major. October 16, 1893, the premiere of the Pathétique in St. Petersburg took place under his personal direction that leaves the audience in a state of admired surprise, but with large areas of misunderstanding. The “Requiem for myself”, the symphony with a “mysterious” program is one’s spiritual and artistic testament. Only nine days later the musician dies. It is a common opinion (although not shared by all) that he committed suicide, even if the way and circumstances are still uncertain: there has been talk of cholera, contracted by drinking infected water, although arsenic poisoning is more likely to produce a symptomatology roughly identical to that of cholera.

The link to the Youtube video below is for a very special interpretation of one of my favourite Tchaikovsky songs from the Nutcracker suite, The Sugar Plum Fairy.