Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky

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Born: 7 May 1840, Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia
Died: 6 November 1893, St Petersburg

LIFE

Tchaikovsky lived a life full of tensions and contradictions. His musical abilities manifested themselves when he was very young but his parents hoped that he would follow a more secure career path as a civil servant and sent him to the School of Jurisprudence in St Petersburg. He eventually turned his back on this to study music seriously and attended the European-influenced St Petersburg Conservatory. At the same time, a movement to promote a more nationalistic, idiomatically Russian form of music emerged. This was represented by the group of composers known as The Five: Balakirev, Cui, Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin. Determined to preserve his own artistic independence, Tchaikovsky found himself torn between European and Russian ideals.

A teaching position at the Moscow Conservatory, which he held from 1866-1878, gave Tchaikovsky some stability. His music for the ballet Swan Lake (1876) established his natural instinct for musical story-telling.

In his personal life, Tchaikovsky found little happiness. It is now recognized that his efforts to suppress his homosexuality provoked bouts of acute depression. His marriage to one of his former composition students, Antonina Miliukova, in 1877, was a disaster, but in the midst of the nervous crisis it provoked, he produced his Fourth Symphony and his most well-loved opera, Eugene Onegin.

Tchaikovsky found consolation and an invaluable source of financial support from Nadezhda von Meck. She was a wealthy widow and influential patron of the arts. They never met but exchanged over 1000 letters between 1877 and 1890. Tchaikovsky confided in her, trusted her artistic judgement and relied on her for a generous annual allowance.

In 1884 Tchaikovsky entered a final productive period, completing three symphonies and the ballets The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. His final symphony, the Sixth (Pathétique) was performed in St Petersburg in 1893. Nine days later, the composer was dead. The cause of his death was almost certainly cholera but rumours and conspiracy theories have abounded, now comprehensively rejected, as to whether he might have committed suicide by drinking contaminated water.

Henrietta Bredin

[A context and overview of Tchaikovsky's major works] 

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Future Performances

• Onegin - Rehearsal
  Main Auditorium
  

  Performances

  Wed 29 Sep 2010, 11:30 AM
  Available to Friends of Covent Garden from 10 June 10AM
  
• The Royal Ballet
  Onegin
  Main Auditorium
  

  Performances

  Thu 30 Sep 2010, 7:30 PM Buy Now
  
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  Mon 25 Oct 2010, 7:30 PM Buy Now
  
  
• La Valse - Rehearsal
  Main Auditorium
  

  Performances

  Thu 14 Oct 2010, 12:30 PM
  Available to Friends of Covent Garden from 10 June 10AM
  
• The Royal Ballet
  La Valse / New Brandstrup / Winter Dreams / Theme and Variations
  Main Auditorium
  

  Performances

  Fri 15 Oct 2010, 7:30 PM Buy Now
  
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