(Reprising this post on my favorite biography.)
I finished Anthony Holden’s Tchaikovsky (Random House, 1995), an outstandingly well-written account of the great composer’s life.
Here is an indication of the young Pyotr’s aptitude for music: “Tchaikovsky’s parents entertained a Polish pianist of their acquaintance, who naturally gave an evening concert for the thin line of local gentry. After the Pole had played two Chopin mazurkas, six-year-old Pyotr Ilyich insisted on taking over at the piano, and repeated the music from memory with sufficient aplomb for the maestro to compliment him as a ‘promising’ musician.”
But at other times music’s hold on him seemed too much for him to bear: “On another such evening the boy fled from the room, to the surprise of Fanny [his governess] and his parents, who had been expecting pleas to be allowed to stay up late. Two hours later Fanny looked into Petya’s bedroom, to find the child still fully dressed, sprawled on his bed in hysterical tears. ‘Oh, the music, the music!’ he sobbed. ‘Save me from it, Fanny, save me! It’s here … in here!”—he struck his forehead—‘and it won’t leave me in peace.’”
Holden goes on to tell the story of Tchaikovsky’s training for a career in the civil service, his struggles to establish his voice and musical career, his passionately Platonic correspondence with his patron Nadezhda von Meck, his active homosexuality and the joys and torments it brought him, the awesome power and range of his mature music, and the mystery of his sudden death in 1893.
Highly recommended.
Related: Newberry short commentaries on the great works in art history:
