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Second Foreign Tour: The Sleeping Beauty

The summer of 1888 would be largely uneventful. In such quiet conditions company became a necessity, and Laroche was resident at Frolovskoye for a month. A more unusual guest was the wife of Kondratyev’s manservant, Alexander Legoshin, who had so devotedly tended Tchaikovsky’s old friend during the latter’s last weeks. Tchaikovsky had clearly developed an affection for the whole Legoshin family, and he bought a perambulator for their two-year-old daughter, who suffered from rickets. For his own name-day he arranged a party with Jurgenson, Albrecht and Ziloti among the guests, the two-day event allowing liberal opportunities for Tchaikovsky’s favourite card game, vint. There were, of course, the regular trips to Moscow and St Petersburg. At the end of the summer he paid a visit to Kamenka, his first for over two years. His feelings about it remained mixed, and his week there was overshadowed by grim news from Paris. It was little more than a year since the sudden death of his eldest niece, Tanya, and now a second, Vera, was dying of tuberculosis in the French capital.

The manifest success of his first foreign tour as conductor was already bringing in proposals for further forays abroad. By August he had committed himself to concerts in Dresden and Berlin, to which Frankfurt, Cologne and London were soon added. Ahead of this he had two in St Petersburg, after which he would have to redeem his promise to conduct Onegin in Prague. The first of the Russian concerts was that at which the Fifth Symphony received its premiere, and also on the programme was Laroche’s overture, Karmozina , which Tchaikovsky had orchestrated for his friend. At the rehearsal the piece had been heavily criticized for its brashness, but Tchaikovsky, determined that the work should not be a failure, fabricated (without Laroche’s knowledge) a programme that was circulated ahead of the concert, claiming that the overture was intended as the prelude to an opera that opened with a Venetian Carnival orgy. Meanwhile he had, by his sustained encouragements, extracted a play from Shpazhinskaya, but had failed to manipulate the Imperial Theatres into mounting it. Hearing now of its rejection, he personally broke the news to the authoress, softening the blow as best he could. In addition, his friend and former colleague, Nikolay Hubert, had recently died, and Tchaikovsky had been giving financial support to his widow. Kashkin, too, was in financial difficulties, and Tchaikovsky organized a secret loan to help his friend. Then on 26 November, all these various commitments and interventions having been discharged, he headed for Prague.

This time his Czech sortie was comparatively low key. On his previous visit he had foregone all fees, but now he was to receive half the takings. As it turned out, the concert he was to conduct had been badly timed and organized, the audience was small, and the receipts low. But the press having expressed outrage at this, Tchaikovsky’s reception at the opening of Onegin was a personal triumph, with endless ovations. During this visit he invited Dvořák to conduct in Moscow, and on his return to Russia he personally supervised the arrangements, including fee, for this visit – though Dvořák insisted that it should be no earlier than March 1890 for fear of Russian frosts. As Tchaikovsky passed through Vienna on his way home, he read in a newspaper of Vera’s death and, assuming that her body would be brought back to St Petersburg for burial, directed himself to the capital. After conducting two concerts in Moscow, he returned to St Petersburg for a third, this time promoted by the publisher, Mitrofan Belyayev, and which included The Tempest , the rest of the programme being made up of works by ‘The New Russian School’ – that is, the kuchka . Tchaikovsky had long had good personal relations with most of its members, and by now he knew he need have absolutely no fear of comparisons with them, and that any problems or tensions with its members had been finally put to rest. These and other matters having been delivered or completed, on 6 January 1889, the Russian Christmas Day, he was back in Frolovskoye with four free weeks ahead of him. At last he could set in earnest about composing his new ballet, The Sleeping Beauty .

For a while we will pass over the month devoted to sketching this masterpiece, and follow Tchaikovsky on his second European tour as conductor. He left Russia on 5 February, delaying in Berlin to consult with his impresario, Hermann Wolf, and to enjoy some time with Artôt. His first concert was in Cologne, where he conducted his Third Suite and was received very warmly, with a triple fanfare at the concert’s end. Frankfurt was next. 1812 was to have been part of the programme, but now the promoters had become nervous about its very noisy ending (despite the Berliners having coped with this unflinchingly), and it was quietly dropped. But the Third Suite received an ovation, and Tchaikovsky was pressed to return before the year’s end.

Two days later he was in Dresden – a more demanding commitment this time (Fourth Symphony and First Piano Concerto), made more difficult by an inferior orchestra and an indiosyncratic soloist, Emil Sauer. Inevitably the concert went less well, though the audience warmed to the symphony as it proceeded, and there was a single fanfare at the end. Meanwhile, his longing to be home grew. As he wrote to the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich:

I cannot express to you how much Heimweh [homesickness], as the Germans call it, fills me with misery, yearning, pining and pain. Last year also I felt this terribly grievous longing for my homeland, but to an infinitely lesser degree. It is not the rehearsals for the concerts, nor the concerts themselves that are particularly burdensome, but the constant gyrating among strange people, even though they are sometimes extremely interesting. But worst of all is that I am scarcely ever alone.

Nevertheless, he had to confess himself well pleased with his self-evident personal success, and before proceeding to Geneva for his next engagement, he was able to relax for two days with his friends, the Brodskys, in Leipzig.

The Geneva orchestra proved both small and inferior, but the players were pleasant and keen, the daily rehearsals brought much improvement, and Tchaikovsky’s contribution to the concert (the Serenade for Strings and the First Suite), given to a packed house, brought an ovation, and a gilded wreath from the local Russian colony. In early 1876 he had spent some weeks there with Sasha and her children, and now, writing to Bob, he recalled especially his two nieces who had so recently died:

Yesterday I went to the Boulevard Plainpalais where you stayed. I remembered Tanya and Vera so vividly, their arms red from running to school in the cold, and you with your tiny nose and not that trunk you now have instead of a nose, and myself not as grey when I was a whole thirteen years younger. I became terribly sad: 

Nessun dolor maggiore

Che ricordarsi del tempo felice

Nella miseria! 

Tchaikovsky’s arrival at his next stop, Hamburg, brought a surprise, for installed in the neighbouring hotel room was Brahms, who had delayed his departure for a day so that he could attend a rehearsal of Tchaikovsky’s new Fifth Symphony. Having heard the piece, Brahms told Tchaikovsky he approved strongly of the first three movements, but did not like the finale. Honest criticism such as this rarely riled Tchaikovsky. ‘Brahms is very amiable,’ he wrote to Modest. ‘After the rehearsal we had lunch together and drank well. He is a very sympathetic person, and I like his integrity and simplicity.’ Forthwith he tried, though unsuccessfully, to persuade Brahms to conduct in Moscow during the next season. As for the Fifth Symphony’s reception by the wider Hamburg audience, this was a triumph. But there were now four weeks to fill before his next engagement, which was in London, where he was hoping especially to further the fortunes of the twenty-year-old pianist Vasily Sapelnikov, who was to be the soloist in the First Piano Concerto. Paris was an easy choice to fill the time gap. Tchaikovsky now had many musical acquaintances there, the city offered an abundance of theatrical and musical events, and there was the new Eiffel Tower to inspect, then ascend. Learning of his presence in the city, Colonne included the Theme and Variations from the Third Suite in one of his concerts, which was followed by a reception at which some of Tchaikovsky’s songs were sung.

On 9 April Tchaikovsky was in London at the Hôtel Dieudonné, waking the next morning to find the capital blanketed in a ‘peasouper’ (a particularly dense fog caused by pollution: some older readers may still remember these). His single concert included the First Suite as well as the concerto, and Sapelnikov scored a special success; he would return to London repeatedly in subsequent years. Early next morning Tchaikovsky slipped into Sapelnikov’s room, kissed the sleeping lad, then left the hotel on his way to Anatoly and Parasha. Passing through Paris en route for Marseilles, he embarked on another Mediterranean crossing.

From time to time Tchaikovsky would strike up a brief relationship with some individual whom he would never meet again, but who had so attracted him that, maybe years later, he would become the dedicatee of one of Tchaikovsky’s compositions. Such a one was Vladimir Sklifosovsky, the son of an eminent Moscow surgeon. On this crossing they traversed together the Strait of Bonifacio, observed a spectacular volcanic eruption on the Lipari Islands, endured a gale off Messina, and together visited the Greek island of Siros. The following port of call was Smyrna (now Izmir), where they again toured the sights – and bought fezzes. On reaching Constantinople, however, Sklifosovsky disembarked. Tchaikovsky wept on parting, and the following year he learned that the youth had died. Yet four years on he would still remember their encounter, dedicating Chant élégiaque , no. 14 of his Eighteen Piano Pieces, op. 72, to Sklifosovsky’s memory.

Tchaikovsky found the voyage along the northern Turkish coast wearying, and it was with relief that he reached Tiflis, though he would find little relaxation in his sister-in-law’s endless socializing. It was gratifying that, in his honour, the Artistic Society mounted a concert of his music which included the Piano Trio, but it was still a very tired Tchaikovsky who, on 14 May, set off for Moscow, following in reverse the route that had brought him to the Caucasus for the first time. There was, however, no respite to be found in Moscow. The Conservatoire was in crisis. Taneyev had resigned as director, and Safonov would agree to replace him only if Albrecht was dismissed. Tchaikovsky knew that there had been tension between these last two, but loyalty to Albrecht fortified his determination that his old friend should not leave under a cloud, and he at length persuaded Albrecht to resign (Tchaikovsky himself drafting his letter of resignation for him), while persuading Taneyev to remain as professor of counterpoint. But even with all this and the Conservatoire’s annual examinations to cope with, he still found time to arrange that Hubert’s widow should fill Albrecht’s now vacant position.

Next stop was St Petersburg to visit Modest and Kolya, consult with Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the Intendant of the Imperial Theatres, about the mounting of The Sleeping Beauty , and to participate in the arrangements to celebrate Anton Rubinstein’s golden jubilee as a pianist. Rubinstein himself being unable to be present at the first concert, Tchaikovsky persuaded Rimsky to replace him as conductor, Tchaikovsky himself making his debut as a castanet-player in Rimsky’s  Capriccio espagnole because the professional percussionist proved incompetent. On 31 May he was back in Frolovskoye to complete The Sleeping Beauty , which the theatre required by the middle of September.

Whereas we know very little about the background and composition of Swan Lake , there is ample data about the birth process of The Sleeping Beauty . The idea for a ballet to be based on a folktale as told by the seventeenth-century French writer, Charles Perrault, had come from Vsevolozhsky in May 1888, and the scenario would be basically his. Tchaikovsky was quickly captivated by it, in September conferring with both Vsevolozhsky and Marius Petipa (today remembered as one of ballet’s legendary choreographers), during which everything was worked out down to the finest detail. Tchaikovsky’s excitement was such that in October he could not resist making a start on the music, though it was only in January 1889 that he could begin composition in earnest. Yet in little more than a fortnight a very substantial part of the ballet was sketched. Tchaikovsky’s second European tour brought another interruption, but within a week of his return to Frolovskoye, the sketches of The Sleeping Beauty were complete. ‘I finished on 7 June 1889 at 8 p.m. Praise be to God!’ he wrote at their end. ‘In all I worked ten days in October, three weeks in January, and now a week – so, in all, about forty days.’ The scoring, however, took much longer than that of Swan Lake , for Tchaikovsky now wanted his music to be presented with much more variety of colour and texture than in the earlier ballet, and it was August before this operation was finished. He was disappointed by the ballet’s rather muted reception at its premiere, but this reaction was probably occasioned by the music’s extra sophistication. Though The Sleeping Beauty has never been able to match the popularity of Swan Lake , it is arguably (dare I say it?) the finer piece.

The Sleeping Beauty: ballet in four acts *****

[This is the sort of piece about which I am tempted to say so much here that I would anticipate a good deal of the following commentary. The Sleeping Beauty lacks, of course, the pathos of Swan Lake, which reaches to the heart (ballets seem especially in danger of losing out if they have happy endings), but there is a magical inventiveness and sophistication (and a far greater consistency of quality) in  Tchaikovsky’s music for his second ballet that compensates for its ‘softer’ drama. No matter: I am sure that if you like one of the ballets, you will like the other (individual opinions are likely to be less divided here than they may be about Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, for instance).]

The following summary of the ballet’s plot omits much action detail:

Prologue. The Christening of Princess Aurora: a banquet in the King’s palace. March (no. 1): Courtiers assemble and await the arrival of the King and Queen while Catalabutte, the master of ceremonies, checks the guest list. Trumpets announce the entrance of the King and Queen with their newborn daughter, Aurora. Scène dansante (no. 2): Aurora’s godmothers, the good Fairies, enter, then the Lilac Fairy, Aurora’s chief godmother. Royal gifts are presented to the Fairies. Pas de six (no. 3): The Fairies in turn present gifts to their god-daughter. Finale (no. 4): The Lilac Fairy prepares to present her gift, but a noise offstage warns of the approach of a furious Carabosse, the evil Fairy, whose invitation to the christening had been overlooked. A terrified Catalabutte admits this was his mistake. All are alarmed. Carabosse, accompanied by ugly pages, appears in a wheelbarrow drawn by six rats. The King and Queen promise to punish Catalabutte for his mistake, the latter begs forgiveness, but Carabosse torments him. She declares that she wants to present a gift to Aurora. Despite the good Fairies’ intervention, Carabosse cannot be mollified, and she delivers her ‘gift’: Aurora will grow to be beautiful, but will fall into eternal sleep the first time she pricks her finger. All are dumbfounded and Carabosse exults. But the Lilac Fairy has not yet presented her gift, and she can still mitigate the curse: a handsome Prince will one day come, his kiss will break the spell, and he and Aurora will marry. A furious Carabosse leaves, and the good Fairies surround the cradle protectively.

Act 1. The park of the King’s palace. Scène (no. 5): Aurora is twenty, and the King is happy that Carabosse’s curse has not been fulfilled. A law now prohibits all needles and pins, and Catalabutte reproves a group of peasants who are carrying some; they beg forgiveness, but are sent to prison. The King and Queen, accompanied by four Princes, enter. When told by Catalabutte why the peasants are going to prison, the King and Queen condemn them, but the Princes intercede, urging that no tears be shed at Aurora’s coming of age. The King agrees, and frees the peasants. General rejoicing. Valse (no. 6): Peasants dance. Scène (no. 7): Having only seen her portrait, the Princes wish to see Aurora herself, who has been given free choice as to which of them shall be her husband. Aurora rushes in, and the Princes are astonished at her beauty. Pas d’action (no. 8): Aurora dances with the Princes in turn – and rejects all of them. Her parents urge her to marry, but she wishes to preserve her freedom – and dances off. Noticing an old woman beating time with a spindle, she snatches it from her, and teases the Princes by dancing with it as though with a sceptre. Finale (no. 9): Suddenly Aurora feels her finger being pricked, dances wildly, then falls lifeless. The old woman reveals herself to be Carabosse and disappears, as do the Princes. However, the Lilac Fairy materializes, mitigates the curse, reassuring the King and Queen, and prophesying that Aurora will fall asleep for a hundred years, to be awakened by the kiss of a handsome Prince, whom she will then marry. They leave with their daughter, and the Lilac Fairy casts a spell over all who remain onstage, the other Fairies appearing so as to protect the peace of the sleepers.

Act 2 Scene 1. Prince Désiré’s hunt. A wooded place beside a river, with a cliff. Entracte et scène (no. 10): Huntsmen and women appear, then settle down to eat. Désiré enters with his tutor, Galifron, and courtiers. Colin-Maillard (Blind man’s buff) (no. 11): A diversion is organized. Scène (nos. 12–13): Various dances. Scène (no. 14): The Prince decides not to join the next hunt, and is left alone. The Lilac Fairy appears from along the river. She tells the Prince she will show him his future bride, and the cliffside opens, revealing a sleeping Aurora and her retinue. Pas d’action (no. 15): Aurora rises and dances for the Prince, who is increasingly captivated. Aurora disappears into a cleft in the rocks. Scène (no. 16): An enamoured Prince begs the Lilac Fairy to take him to where Aurora is. The Lilac Fairy leads him to the boat, which moves off, the scenery becoming wilder. Panorama (no. 17): Night falls. A distant castle, the goal of their journey, is seen. They disembark, the Lilac Fairy opens the castle gates with her wand, and the pages and guards are seen asleep. All is then enveloped in dense clouds, and quiet music is heard.

Entr’acte (no. 18): (Never used in performance).

Act 2 Scene 2. The Sleeping Beauty’s castle . Symphonic entr’acte (no. 19): The clouds disperse. Aurora is asleep on a canopied bed. The King, Queen and courtiers are also asleep: dust and cobwebs everywhere. The Lilac Fairy and the Prince enter. The Prince runs to the bed, but cannot awaken Aurora; he is in despair. Finally he kisses her. Finale (no. 20): The spell is broken, Aurora and all awaken, and the dust and cobwebs disappear. The Prince asks for Aurora’s hand in marriage, and the King assents.

Act 3. The Wedding of Prince Désiré and Princess Aurora. The esplanade of the King’s palace. March (no. 21): The courtiers assemble for festivities. Catalabutte allocates the guests their places. The King and Queen enter, together with the newly-weds and four Fairies. Polonaise (no. 22): Procession of participants in the divertissement. Pas de quatre (no. 23): The four Fairies. Pas de caractère (no. 24): Puss in Boots and the White Cat. Pas de quatre (no. 25): Cinderella and Prince Fortuné. The Bluebird and Princess Florine. Pas de caractère (no. 26): Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. The Bluebird and Prince Fortuné. Pas berichon (no. 27): Tom Thumb, his brothers, and the Ogre. Pas de deux (no. 28): Aurora and Désiré. Entrance of the corps de ballet: Sarabande (no. 29). Finale (no. 30): Apotheosis.

*

Some fifteen years separate The Sleeping Beauty from its predecessor, Swan Lake , and there is a correspondingly wide gap between the two ballets’ dramatic natures. In its own time Swan Lake represented a remarkable achievement in that – and, above all, in its final act – its music had addressed the listener with an unsparing power and precision which many a ballet audience of the time must have found disconcerting. Nowadays Swan Lake poses no such problems for ballet-goers drawn, as they are, from a far wider social range and a very different musical environment; indeed, it is probably Swan Lake ’s high dramatic tensions and deep emotional issues – and Tchaikovsky’s magnificent responses to these – that are the prime reasons why it has retained a popularity that The Sleeping Beauty has never been able to match. In this later ballet there is no pathos-filled tragedy, no incident loaded with true pain or distress, and its outcome we know is one for which every spectator has wished, and which is lavishly celebrated in the final act (which, in the past, it was not uncommon practice to perform separately in an evening of ballet excerpts under the title Aurora’s Wedding ). Yet – and I love Swan Lake , and never miss an opportunity of seeing it – The Sleeping Beauty is the finer piece, dramatically as focused as can be, with a far smaller proportion of purely decorative dancing such as dilutes Swan Lake , with a scenario that is consistently as ‘dramatic’ as possible, and with a composer who now had all the insight and skill demanded by such a challenge.

As in Swan Lake , the orchestral prelude introduces the musical representatives of the two forces that will struggle for supremacy over the destiny of the two lovers, Aurora and Désiré. Carabosse comes first, her musical badge violent, vicious, a tight patchwork of menacing fragments, while that of her rival, the Lilac Fairy, is serene, benign and ‘safe’, a lovely, open-hearted melody, its harmonies as stable as its contours are smooth. It slips straight into the Prologue, which opens with a royal entry. This is an event of great pomp and ceremony, and fully justifies Catalabutte’s fussy interventions, which also serve to delay the crucial moment of the royal couple’s appearance, thus making it all the more momentous when it arrives, and meanwhile excusing a generous spread of supporting music. Five godmother Fairies now float in to delicate, airy sounds, and then the sixth, the Lilac Fairy, appears (more fully scored music): these supernaturals, too, are guests and must be formally – and unhurriedly – greeted and seated. This gives way to a more explicit, but equally delicate, waltz as pages and young girls present these dainty visitors with gifts. Royal matters simply must not be hurried, and Tchaikovsky’s music has supported this very substantial span with unfaltering flair and aptness.

It is now the Fairies’ turn to offer their gifts to the baby Aurora, but the individual presentations are preceded by a pas de six , a substantial movement for all of them, opening with a gentle clarinet melody to a harp-washed accompaniment, followed by six tiny solo dances, none more than a minute, two barely half a minute, during which they in turn present their gifts. Each of the first five is a very individual piece, exquisitely wrought, but the more substantial sixth (a waltz) is allotted to the Lilac Fairy. Finally this mixture of formality and individuality is rounded off by a vigorous corporate coda.

Until now all has been relaxed and joyful – and studiedly so, for this is about to change abruptly and hideously. As the Lilac Fairy steps forward to present her gift, a commotion from outside is heard – a furious Carabosse approaches, then bursts in to the music that had opened the ballet. Nothing could be further removed from the secure formality and tone of all we have so far seen and heard; now all will be action-packed, and it is the torrent of successive events that determines the musical course. Fortunately there are some very tiny silences that punctuate the action, and which make marking out these events easier. The first of these mini-silences signals Carabosse’s moment of entry in her rat-drawn wheelbarrow, with grubby pages in attendance, her music from the orchestral prelude confirming that it is she – and note how often, when her music returns in the ballet, it is given some sort of new presentation, for Carabosse is devious, a manipulator: there is no telling quite what she is, or what she will do. Her cackles, and those of her followers, can be heard in the music that immediately follows. A desperate Catalabutte begs for mercy, but receives none (Carabosse’s theme again, with more cackling), the good Fairies entreat Carabosse to forgive the King and Queen for their oversight (the calmer string melody), but Carabosse only laughs maliciously, then delivers her curse (the widely striding bass theme with chugging accompaniment). A tiny silence – and the King and Queen cry out in anguish as Carabosse waves her wand in all directions, and her rats and pages dance and laugh gloatingly. Another tiny silence – and all seems suddenly to freeze as the Lilac Fairy, who has remained hidden, comes forward, her music as calm as ever. Yet the crisis is still to come, for Carabosse attempts frantically to intervene (her music struggling to assert itself) and, for an instant, she succeeds. Again a silence. But the good Fairies quickly crowd protectively round the cradle, and the Lilac Fairy’s music resumes. Carabosse’s attempt to restore her complete curse has failed.

The opening of Act 1 is as relaxed as the opening of the Prologue, though this time it is the peasantry whom we see, and there is a kind of playful innocence about their music. When Catalabutte spies peasants with knitting needles, the musical chatter momentarily falters, and the rushing string passages substantiate his anger and his drastic decision to send them to prison. The sudden pause and slower music mark the arrival of the King and Queen with Aurora’s suitors, the four Princes. The King’s anger at the peasants raises the musical temperature, and the Princes’ very contrasting pleading on their behalf is easily identified: what is less obvious is that tiny elements of Carabosse’s music now stealthily appropriate the quieter passage during which the King’s anger abates – though because she is disguised we cannot yet see that she is actually present. This passage leads into the Valse , the first of the ballet’s great set-piece dances. Yet because it does not have the scale of the waltz that had intervened in the first act of Swan Lake , this one does not feel like an intrusion, instead serving simply to divide the simple rural matters that have preceded it from the portentous royal ritual to come. It also clears the dramatic field for Aurora to make her entrance, and after it she skips in merrily, a carefree young woman whose affections will be instantly challenged by four suitors.

The Rose Adagio (so called because each suitor presents a rose, each of which Aurora discards as a sign of rejection) is the second of the four great set-piece dances in The Sleeping Beauty . The dignified wind-and-harp introduction signals that something of real moment is imminent, and what follows certainly does not disappoint. The drastic reduction in the proportion of decorative formal dancing in The Sleeping Beauty , as compared with Swan Lake , makes a movement as substantial as this stand out the more clearly. In any case, the action has not been frozen, for by the Adagio ’s end we will have seen Aurora turn down each of four highly eligible suitors, and when she goes on to provide, as her variation (a solo dance), the last of the three supplementary dances that follow (the one with solo violin obbligato), she will confirm, at some length, that she remains the same carefree girl we had glimpsed before the Rose Adagio . The two brief dances ahead of Aurora’s (the dance of the maids of honour and the pages, and then the pages’ own brief dance) take the places of what would have been the customary individual variations for the four Princes. As for the coda that follows Aurora’s own variation , this leads into her ever more reckless dance with the snatched spindle, an exhibition with which she hopes to dazzle her rejected suitors, but which drives straight into the act’s Finale at the moment she pricks her finger, and something of Carabosse’s music at last emerges explicitly.

This is a moment where it is worth pausing to note a splendid example of how Tchaikovsky could use a musical idea to project, in its own way, an active moment in the drama. Carabosse’s theme had provided the very first sounds of the ballet’s prelude, and it had a very distinctive ‘dum-dum-diddle-diddle-dum-pom-pom-pom-pom-pom-pom’ rhythm, the ‘diddle-diddle-dum’ bit being a nervous little five-note figure. In a moment that figure will emerge and, as the rest of the orchestra falls away, be repeated with intervening silences to mark out Aurora’s faltering steps. But then, as she begins her ‘vertiginous dance’, the little rhythmic figure resumes and literally ‘spins’ the melody that ‘entangles’ her before she suddenly drops unconscious. I can think of no better example of music being, as it were, the activist that creates the action.

The parents’ grief is heart-rending, and a gloating Carabosse now throws off her disguise, celebrating the triumph of her curse in a full, brazen statement of her melodic badge. The Princes draw their swords, but in an instant she has disappeared and, now terrified, they flee. Once again the Lilac Fairy appears, and she and her theme will preside over the remainder of the scene as she orders the arrangements for Aurora’s century-long sleep, only her spell music (after a great tam-tam stroke) briefly intersecting her own theme as she mitigates the curse. All finally fades into silence; all are now bound by the spell of sleep.

The first stages of Act 2 Scene1 are the most relaxed of the whole ballet. But Prince Désiré must be introduced and a situation devised where he can be left alone to be processed for the role of Aurora’s saviour and spouse. Hunting horns forewarn us of the scene’s dramatic setting, and the floor show which is offered for the Prince’s lunch-time entertainment, though superfluous to dramatic requirements, affords the space in which we can at least observe Désiré, as well as providing an excuse for a modest spot of more formal dancing. It also releases the tension after the traumas of the preceding act. There is a slight whiff of the baroque in the music to which the hunting party enters, and even more so in the staid music that immediately follows, once the racy game of blind man’s buff has been played out (in fact, the first dance is an explicit and decorous sarabande). But with the departure of the hunt without the Prince, the real business of the scene can begin. A harp-wash signals the arrival of the Lilac Fairy in her mother-of-pearl boat. She waves her wand, and the cliff face opens to reveal a vision of the sleeping Aurora. Another wave, and Aurora wakens. At first she is sprightly, then begins her dance of seduction.

Here is the third of the ballet’s great set-piece dances, this one as intimate as the Rose Adagio had been grand. It is mostly a vast, almost unbroken, cello solo, at first almost ingenuously appealing, but then, with tiny, upward-flashing woodwind scales and a more active cello line, growing in allure. Constantly Aurora evades Désiré’s attempts to touch her. Repetitions of a tiny pathos-filled woodwind phrase increase the emotional pressure on the Prince. The music suddenly grows in volume, and the opening melody returns, now on the full battery of cellos. Confident that she has captivated him, Aurora can reinforce her hold through a brief exhibition of her very extrovert, sprightly self; two further short appendages seal her conquest, and she disappears whence she came, while Désiré, now totally her slave, excitedly begs the Lilac Fairy to take him where he may find the embodiment of this vision. Together they embark on that mission.

The journey is truly an enchanted one. The panorama to which they leave is so tranquil, so unruffled, its harmony so simple, each chord so long sustained, and the shifts between chords so smooth, that there is only the gentlest sense of movement: even the two flute-coloured passages that alternate with this in no way threaten the pervasive calm. Even more timeless is the entr’acte symphonique (Le Sommeil (Sleep)) that follows, 1 taking us yet deeper into a spellbound world. Listen out for the top of the music – a very quiet high C for the violins, unbroken for some four minutes (managed by making the first and second violins alternate in overlapping four-bar shifts); this indicates the ‘binding’ presence of magic. And beneath this the other emblems of the supernatural continue to whisper: the Lilac Fairy’s spell of sleep, Carabosse’s theme and the Lilac Fairy’s own melody. The stage has become shrouded in mist, and during this the scene will have been changed so that, when a crescendo at length signals that the clouds are breaking, we shall find ourselves back in the scene that had ended Act 1. Nevertheless, a fundamental stillness remains, and only with the entry of the Lilac Fairy and Désiré does Carabosse herself begin to stir, her music ever more desperate as the Prince approaches Aurora’s bed and, with his kiss, awakens her. A mighty stroke on the tam-tam marks the breaking of the spell; the King and Queen, and all the courtiers wake, and universal joy returns.

The great feature that makes the dramatic pacing of The Sleeping Beauty so much more satisfactory than that of Swan Lake is the drastic reduction in the number of conventional and formal dances that had so obtrusively punctuated the narrative in the earlier ballet. Instead, following the precedent of Delibes’s Coppélia , Tchaikovsky compensated for this loss by appending an extra act that could be filled with decorative dancing in celebration of the lovers’ union. It also gave him total freedom to make these dances whatever he chose, and what is so striking is the dazzling variety of their characters. The act opens with two large movements that confirm the grandeur of the occasion, the march supporting the entry of the King, Queen and courtiers, together with the newlyweds and the four jewel fairies, and the polonaise accompanying the procession of those who will provide the royal entertainment, plus other participants from the preceding acts (including Carabosse: clearly there has been a royal amnesty), the Lilac Fairy bringing up the rear. And so the entertainment begins. It is set out as a series of mostly concise movements, in each of which the varied and colourful orchestration is often a striking feature. First a pas de quatre for the jewel fairies, then a solo variation for each (is it coincidence that the very unusual five-beats-in-a-bar rhythm (divided by Tchaikovsky as two-plus-three beats) given to the Sapphire Fairy corresponds to the numerals in the jewel’s chemical formula, Al2 O3 ?), followed by a corporate coda. Then comes (for me) the real treasure of the act: the pas de caractère for Puss in Boots and the White Cat, who miaow, paw, claw and spit at each other. This is followed by a second pas de quatre , this time for Cinderella and Prince Fortuné, the Blue Bird and Princess Florine, in which the two couples each have a variation before the coda. A second pas de caractère comes next, this time for a nervous Red Riding Hood and a roaring Wolf. Cinderella and Prince Fortuné have a second and larger pas de caractère which begins very animatedly, but then changes to an elegant waltz, and the cabaret ends with a pas berrichon (Berry being a region of France) for Tom Thumb, his brothers, and an Ogre, in which the last strides monstrously, and the others scuttle about the stage. And to conclude the entertainment, the two lovers themselves step forward for a pas de deux .

This is the fourth and last of the great set-piece dances of The Sleepi ng Beauty . First a leisurely passage in which the dancers may take their places: then the dance proper begins with the adagio . Here is a splendid love dance within which the ritual of courtship, then confession, then commitment, is enacted. A restrained tenderness marks the beginning of the Adagio , the glissando on the piano (not normally an orchestral participant, but one heard in several places in this act) and the following pause signalling hesitancy. The adagio begins again, taking a different course, yet ending, as before, with a glissando. But already a suppressed excitement is to be felt in the two brief phrases that follow, for their spans are far shorter – yet each time there is the same hesitancy. Then suddenly, as with all true love, constraint vanishes, the declaration is frank and rapturous, the midway break merely a breathless pause before the lovers may revel in it all over again. As is usual in classical ballet, the dancers each have a variation , Désiré’s masculine and athletic, Aurora’s delicate and playful, before their joint coda.

This grand celebration – and the ballet itself – must now be wound up. Decorum is firmly reinstated in the dignified sarabande , and this choice of dance, with its archaic style, reminds us that the action of The Sleeping Beauty has been envisaged as taking place during the reign of the ‘Sun King’, Louis XIV of France, a reign of especially ostentatious splendour. And though formality is thrown to the winds in the corporate mazurka of the following finale, this will be stopped dead in its tracks so that the apotheosis , based on the French tune, ‘Vive Henri IV’, may be a proclamation of the dignity as well as the splendour of kingship.

The Sleeping Beauty is a masterpiece. Taken just as we see it in the theatre, as a bevy of costumed figures creating the various roles and driving the action, it makes an impression that is vastly impressive, and also, perhaps, rather moving. But what makes this ballet additionally remarkable, for me at least, are the extra resonances I detect within it, and which elevate it to the plane of myth in a way that might have been denied it, had it been presented as an opera. Because an opera libretto uses language, it defines events and actions, feelings and meanings very precisely; by contrast, ballet, because it lacks the definition and exactitude that words impose, leaves the listener more freedom to respond at will, and to imagine. We may take the tale as a several-sided metaphor of life: childhood, youth, love, marriage – or of the seasons: autumn (sowing), winter (sleeping), spring (waking), summer (reaping) – or it may even stir a metaphysical awareness: birth, death, regeneration, salvation. Such resonances may be stirred especially when Désiré’s journey begins. The magical, unbroken drift of the panorama begins to suspend time, while the ‘Sleep’ entr’acte takes us yet deeper into the kingdom of magic itself, where everything floats, rational order barely survives, and the only slender thread of control and coherence is the violins’ unbroken high C which binds all to itself. Only then do we slip back into the dynamic of the ballet’s narrative.

Some readers will question all this, and – fair enough! But there is something very special, very mysterious here that affects me quite differently from almost any other passage in Tchaikovsky’s music.

I wrote earlier in this book that there are three works by Tchaikovsky which I would wish to preserve if – perish the thought! – I had to sacrifice all the rest. It is only a personal choice, and readers may very well choose differently. One is the opera Eugene Onegin , and the second is this ballet, The Sleeping Beauty . There is still one to come.

1 When Tchaikovsky first composed this section he included an entr’acte for solo violin and orchestra (as noted with Swan Lake , this would have been designed to enable the court violinist, often a leading virtuoso of the time, to perform an obbligato solo). However, this entr’acte was dropped before the premiere for, though it is a worthwhile piece in itself, it would have catastrophically broken the spell of this section as well as extending it intolerably. Nevertheless, in modern recordings it is normally included, so the best thing is to be ready to jump across this track.

26

Two Further Relationships: The Queen of Spades

For all his pleasure in Frolovskoye, Tchaikovsky was aware of its shortcomings. Despite his numerous visitors, he could still feel lonely there, and from July 1889 he also rented a flat in Moscow, especially since he was becoming increasingly involved in the musical life of that city. It seems sometimes that Tchaikovsky, once he had seen close to him a problem where he could help, found it almost impossible not to intervene. The problem might involve an individual, or else some cause for which he had special sympathy. This was very much the case with the RMS in Moscow. The Society was ailing, and during the later months of 1889 Tchaikovsky would be much occupied with organizing its next concert season, a task he seems to have discharged almost single-handedly, often himself acting as the impresario. He personally conducted the negotiations with Brodsky not only so that the latter should perform the Violin Concerto dedicated to him in one of the concerts Tchaikovsky himself would conduct, but also so that Brodsky should bring his string quartet to Moscow for four recitals. In Tiflis Tchaikovsky had been much impressed with Ippolitov-Ivanov and his singer wife, Varvara Zarudnaya, and he took personal charge of the arrangements that would enable the couple to be heard in Moscow during the season. Determined to engage more celebrity musicians, he coaxed Nápravník, the conducting star of St Petersburg, to appear in Moscow for a much reduced fee.

Meanwhile Tchaikovsky’s own conducting career had been expanding rapidly. In late September a splendid new production of Eugene Onegin had been mounted in Moscow, and Tchaikovsky had presided over some of the rehearsals, then conducted the opening night. But it was not only in Moscow that he was required, for only two days later he was in St Petersburg for a ten-day stint, not only to supervise rehearsals for the premiere of The Sleeping Beauty , but also to participate in organizing the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of Anton Rubinstein’s debut as a pianist. This would be inaugurated on 30 November, and in the meantime Tchaikovsky would conduct two concerts in Moscow. As for the Rubinstein anniversary, Tchaikovsky would compose a chorus of greeting for its inauguration, and also an Impromptu for a presentation album of piano pieces; then he had to conduct, on successive days, the two initial concerts of Rubinstein’s own works, one concert involving eight hundred performers. Five days later he was back in Moscow in charge of a charity concert, the programme including Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – then back to St Petersburg for rehearsals of The Sleeping Beauty , and to conduct the first half of yet another concert. It was a prodigious schedule, and inevitably he emerged from it totally exhausted. Yet he judged it had been worth the hassle, for apart from the increasing personal prestige he gained from his public appearances, there was also the satisfaction of observing the manifest improvements in the RMS’s fortunes, mainly, it seems, as a consequence of his personal efforts to attract star performers to Moscow.

Relationships among Russians can often appear very volatile, and sometimes irrational, when compared with the more solid (though not necessarily superior) ways in which we conduct ours (mostly). The relationship between Anton Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky, his former pupil, was curious and ambivalent on both sides. Privately Tchaikovsky could be blistering about the quality of some of his former teacher’s works – yet, Modest remembered, he was personally overawed by him:

In Anton Grigorevich’s presence he [Tchaikovsky] was always ill at ease, flustered as befits one who adores. He regarded Rubinstein as a being standing so far above him as to exclude any possibility of equality in their relations.

We can see this – and also how tactless, even cruel, Rubinstein could be – in an incident at the meal after the second St Petersburg concert Tchaikovsky had conducted in his former teacher’s honour:

When someone tactlessly expressed a wish that Anton Grigorevich should drink a toast ‘as brothers’ with Pyotr Ilich, the latter was not only confused but became indignant about it, and in reply protested sincerely and with passion that ‘his tongue could never bring itself to address Anton Grigorevich as tï [equivalent of the more intimate French form of address, tu ], that this would impair the essence of their relationship, that he would be happy if Anton Grigorevich addressed him as tï , but that he would refuse for ever to change his own use of vï [equivalent of French vous ], which expressed the sense of veneration which he nourished towards Rubinstein, that distance which separated the pupil from the master, the man from the embodiment of his ideal.

It might have been hoped that Rubinstein would have responded with something to mitigate Tchaikovsky’s evident distress. But he did not: in fact, he made the situation even worse – and in so doing, uncovered the gnawing jealousy he had felt at Tchaikovsky’s close relationship with his brother, Nikolay. Alexandra Panayeva, who had sung in the first part of the concert, was sitting between Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky, and recalled what happened next:

Suddenly Anton Grigorevich, bending over me towards Pyotr Ilich, interrupted him with a laugh. ‘Now let us assume, Pyotr Ilich, you do not love me but love my brother – then I thank you for that.’ A confused Pyotr Ilich was about to protest, but Rubinstein repeated, ‘You love my brother – and for that, thank you!’ Humiliated, Tchaikovsky crumpled in his chair, and silence followed until Vasily Safonov jumped to his feet to make an indignant defence of Tchaikovsky.

Tchaikovsky himself had long been aware of Anton’s jealousy of Nikolay, having in Paris eight years earlier observed Anton’s barely concealed satisfaction at Nikolay’s death as the latter’s remains were being loaded on to a train for their return to Russia. Patently what was so galling to Anton was that he, having been responsible for turning Tchaikovsky into a professional composer, had seen the latter become the star of his brother’s empire in Moscow, with Nikolay himself gaining prestige through his association with the premieres of so many of Tchaikovsky’s works. Perhaps Tchaikovsky’s recognition of this did much to soften his reciprocal resentment. Certainly bitterness remained. Writing to the German critic, Eugen Zabel, in 1892, Tchaikovsky revealed how ambivalent his feelings were: ‘I have the pain of confessing to you that Anton Rubinstein did nothing, but nothing at all , to further my plans and projects. This has always distressed me.’ Yet, he continued, ‘I see him from time to time, and always with pleasure, for this extraordinary man has only to hold out his hand to you, and direct a smile at you, for you to be on your knees before him.’ For Tchaikovsky, despite everything, Anton Rubinstein always remained the most revered personality among living musicians.

Nor, on Rubinstein’s side, did this distressing incident reveal more than a part of his view of Tchaikovsky. Nikolay’s death in 1881 had clearly done much to ease his jealousy. Indeed, two years before this distressing post-concert incident, Anton had approached Tchaikovsky to see whether the latter would assign his new opera, The Enchantress , to a company Rubinstein was anxious to form, and which would perform only operas by Russian composers. And if this was not possible, Anton continued, would Tchaikovsky compose an opera especially for them? ‘It will all be prepared carefully – you have nothing whatsoever to worry about. May I hope? Scribble a couple of words in reply.’ Then for the 1892 concert season of the St Petersburg branch of the RMS, Rubinstein would propose that Tchaikovsky should be given the prime role as conductor of ‘ten concerts on “indispensable” [the most important?] days, with an augmented fee, and agreement that there should be no constraints on his rehearsal time’. The following year, writing to his sister, Sofiya, who was in Odessa, Anton would list the musical pleasures in prospect for her in that city – ‘the Russian opera, and Tchaikovsky with Sapelnikov. You are lucky. I’m becoming envious!’ And, finally, there is the pain-filled note Rubinstein would send her seven months later when the pupil, whose talent he had done so much to foster, was no more. Here was the final verdict of the man who had so distressed Tchaikovsky at the post-concert dinner:

What do you say about Tchaikovsky’s death? Is it possible that this was the will of God? What a loss to Russian music! Yet, you know, he was in the prime of life, he was only fifty [in fact, fifty-three] – and all this because of a glass of water! What a nonsense are all such tricks – and this life – and everything, and everything.

Tchaikovsky’s relationship with Anton Rubinstein would span his whole adult life: that with the young story-teller and playwright, Anton Chekhov, would be only brief. Yet it is a touching incident, and one worth narrating, partly because it was between two of Russia’s greatest creative artists, but also because it affords us yet another glimpse of the human Tchaikovsky, always ready to support young talent. Modest already knew of the twenty-eight-year-old doctor who, as a sideline, had begun publishing short stories eight years earlier, and in December 1888, at Modest’s home, Tchaikovsky and Chekhov met. The former was already familiar with Chekhov’s work, and the two men discovered that their admiration was mutual. Then, a year on, at the time when Tchaikovsky was already heavily involved in organizing the Moscow RMS’s concert season, Chekhov wrote to him:

Dear Pyotr Ilich,

This month I am going to begin printing a little collection of my own stories. These stories are as tedious and boring as autumn, their tone is monotonous, and artistic elements in them are closely entwined with medical ones. Nevertheless, this hasn’t prevented me from daring to turn to you with a very humble request: permit me to dedicate this little collection to you. The idea of dedicating this anthology to you was sown in my head as far back as that very day when, dining with you at Modest Ilich’s, I heard you had read my stories. If, together with your assent, you would also send me your photograph, then I shall receive more than I’m worth, and I’ll be happy to all eternity. Forgive me for so troubling you.

Tchaikovsky was delighted by the dedication, visited Chekhov to convey his thanks, then followed this up with a letter:

Dear Anton Pavlovich,

I enclose my photograph, and earnestly beg you to entrust yours to the messenger. Did I adequately express my gratitude for the dedication? I think I did not, and so I will tell you again that I am deeply touched by your kindness. I press your hand warmly.

Chekhov was quick to respond:

I am very, very touched, dear Pyotr Ilich, and I give you boundless thanks. I am sending you both the photograph and the book, and I would send you the sun, too, if it belonged to me. You left behind your cigarette case. I am returning it to you. Three cigarettes are missing: these were smoked by the cellist, the flautist, and the teacher. I thank you again, and allow me to remain your heartfelt, devoted Anton Chekhov.

The informality of tone in the last sentence reveals the ease that Chekhov now felt in this new relationship, and that it had already become mutually a very relaxed one is substantiated by his inscription in his book: ‘To Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky, from his future librettist’.

Nothing could demonstrate more clearly not only the warmth in this new relationship, but also the confidence Tchaikovsky felt in this still-little-known author’s ability to be the librettist of his next opera. It was to be based on Bela , a tragic love story concerning a cynical young Russian officer and a beautiful Caucasian girl, and was drawn from A Hero of Our Time , a classic Russian novel by Mikhail Lermontov, a younger contemporary of Pushkin. However, there being no hope he could undertake anything for the moment, Tchaikovsky responded with a personal gesture in compensation:

I am sending you a season ticket for the symphony concert series of the RMS. I am terribly glad that I can be of some little service to you. I cannot deliver it myself, for all this week is being swallowed up in preparing for the first concert, and in looking after our guest, Rimsky-Korsakov. God grant that next week I shall be able to talk with you as I would like.

P.S. I would point out that the ticket can be used by anyone, if you so wish.

In the following spring Chekhov’s book, Gloomy People , an anthology of ten stories dedicated to Tchaikovsky, was published, but as Tchaikovsky was based in Italy at the time, Modest took delivery of his copy. Chekhov’s covering letter to Modest was further confirmation of his view of Tchaikovsky:

I am prepared day and night to mount a guard of honour at the porch of Pyotr Ilich’s house – I revere him so much. If we’re talking of ranks, then he occupies in Russian creativity the second place after Lev Tolstoy, who has long occupied the first (I allot the third place to the painter, Ilya Repin, and award myself the ninety-eighth). The dedication would, I thought, be a partial, minimal expression of that great critical opinion that I, as a writer, have formed about his magnificent talent. Unfortunately I have had to fulfil my dream through a book which I do not consider my best. It is made up of especially gloomy psychological studies, and bears a gloomy title, such that my dedication must be little to the taste of Pyotr Ilich himself and his admirers.

In fact, the ten tales in the collection were some of Chekhov’s best, and on hearing of the writer’s kind words about himself, Tchaikovsky was deeply touched. ‘You can’t imagine how pleasant I find Chekhov’s words about me,’ he wrote to Modest. ‘I’ll write to him when I’ve returned a little to normal.’

But no such letter exists, and by the time of Tchaikovsky’s return to Russia, Chekhov was some thousands of miles away on a sociological expedition to Sakhalin Island, off the eastern coast of Siberia. Their next, and final, contact came nearly two years later. It was Chekhov who wrote, but his letter had little to do with his own affairs, being concerned with Chekhov’s ambitious cellist friend, a certain Marian Semashko, though the letter did give Tchaikovsky notice of the new collection of Chekhov’s stories which would be published imminently. Chekhov’s hope was that Tchaikovsky might be able to help Semashko in securing a good professional appointment. In fact, Tchaikovsky had already met Semashko (he was the cellist who had smoked one of Tchaikovsky’s cigarettes), and had been rather less than impressed by him. Accordingly, in his reply he told Chekhov that he thought Semashko was aspiring to a position for which he was not really suited, and that he should seek an orchestral appointment. But now Tchaikovsky felt obliged to make his own excuses for not having written earlier to Chekhov:

How glad I am, dear Anton Pavlovich, to see from your letter that you are in no way angry with me, for I did not really thank you for the dedication of Gloomy People , in which I take immense pride. I remember that during your expedition I was always going to write a long letter to you, even attempting to explain which qualities in your talent so captivated and bewitched me. But there wasn’t time for it – and, above all, I had not got it in me, for it is very difficult for a musician to express in words what and how he feels in regard of this or that artistic phenomenon.

And so – my thanks for not complaining about me. I warmly thank you in advance for the book. God grant that we shall be able to see each other, and have a talk. I press your hand warmly.

 

Sincerely devoted to you,

    P. T CHAIKOVSKY

But it seems the hoped-for meeting never took place. No further letters passed between the two men, but the mutual respect clearly remained. Like Anton Rubinstein, Chekhov was genuinely distressed by Tchaikovsky’s sudden passing. Two days after his death, Chekhov telegraphed Modest: ‘The news staggered me. It is a terrible anguish. I loved and revered Pyotr Ilich very deeply, and I am indebted to him for much. You have my heartfelt sympathy.’

*

With the premiere of The Sleeping Beauty in St Petersburg on 15 January 1890, and one more concert to conduct in Moscow three days later, Tchaikovsky had at last completed his current stint as composer–consultant and conductor. He was exhausted, but longed to return to composition, and his plans were already laid. Three years earlier the minor composer, Nikolay Klenovsky, had commissioned Modest to devise a libretto on Pushkin’s short story, The Queen of Spades , and three scenes had been written before Klenovsky lost interest in the project. Tchaikovsky, it seems, knew nothing of this until the autumn of 1889, when Vsevolozhsky suggested he should compose an opera on the orphaned libretto. His interest was immediately aroused, meetings were held with those who would be responsible for mounting the production, and on 26 January Tchaikovsky headed for Berlin. He needed to settle somewhere where he could compose undisturbed, and his choice fell on Florence. He arrived in the Italian city on 30 January. The following day he set about the opera.

Pushkin’s short story, The Queen of Spades , could hardly be more different from Eugene Onegin , a novel in verse. Where the latter had been a heart-rending love story, the former was an ironic ghost story, a tale of obsession, tersely told. Hermann, an officer in the engineers, is obsessed by gambling, watching others play, but never participating himself. By chance he hears of an old Countess’s secret of three winning cards. To discover this, he targets Liza, the Countess’s young ward, who is her mistress’s drudge. Working on Liza’s affections, Hermann gains access to the Countess, but in trying to extract her secret, he frightens her to death. He attends her funeral: she winks at him from her coffin. Her ghost appears to him in his room and reveals the three-card secret: three, seven, ace. Hermann visits the gambling house, plays on three and seven, and wins spectacularly. But playing a third time, it is the queen of spades that turns up – and the card winks at him. Hermann goes mad – and Liza marries a ‘very pleasant young man somewhere in the civil service, and with a good income’. Indeed, Pushkin’s tone throughout his whole narrative had been ironic. Tchaikovsky’s would be very different.

Tchaikovsky had arrived in Florence with the libretto of the first two scenes only, and Modest was hard pressed to keep ahead of his brother. When Modest’s work arrived, Tchaikovsky found much of it needed pruning, for he recognized that, as in Pushkin’s text, there must be no padding, especially in those scenes where the crucial events of the drama are played out. His engagement with his subject became such that he found working on the bedroom confrontation between Hermann and the Countess ‘so terrible that a feeling of horror still remains with me’, as he admitted after being preoccupied with it a couple of days. Just as he had totally identified with Tatyana and her misfortunes while composing Onegin , so he empathized wholeheartedly with Hermann, and on composing Hermann’s death scene, he found his reaction was as violent as it was unexpected. As he wrote to Modest:

I pitied Hermann so much that I suddenly began weeping copiously. Afterwards I began to ponder why, for there has never been a similar occasion when I have wept at my hero’s fate. It seems to me that Hermann was not just a pretext for writing this or that music, but all the while a real, living human being, at the same time very ‘sympathetic’ to me. Because Nikolay Figner [who was to create the part of Hermann] is also very ‘sympathetic’ to me, and because all the while I imagined Hermann in the shape of Figner, I likewise felt the most lively concern for his misfortunes. Now I think that this warm and lively relationship with the opera’s hero has probably expressed itself beneficially in my music.

It appears that, when Figner himself at last became acquainted with the role, he found it one with which he could identify completely. ‘He is in raptures about his part. He speaks of it with tears in his eyes,’ Tchaikovsky could report to Modest.

The whole of The Queen of Spades was scored by early June, and its premiere took place on 19 December in St Petersburg, where it was a sensational success. No expense had been spared in mounting it, the performance was splendid, and audience reaction ecstatic. The press was less kind. Some very fundamental modifications had been introduced into Pushkin’s story – and this sacrilege had been perpetrated on one of the best-known and best-loved of Russian literary classics. The opera was produced in Kiev only twelve days after the St Petersburg premiere, but it did not reach Moscow for nearly another year. By this time, however, criticism was dying away, and The Queen of Spades was on the way to establishing itself as second only to Onegin in popularity among all Tchaikovsky’s operas.

The Queen of Spades: opera in three acts *****

[This is the most overtly dramatic of all Tchaikovsky’s mature operas, containing some of his most radical music. While, perhaps, it does not have quite the consistency of Eugene Onegin, its expressive range is broader and, with Onegin, it must be ranked as one of the greatest of nineteenth-century operas. ]

The Queen of Spades is in seven scenes set in St Petersburg in the time of Catherine the Great (empress:1762–96), and not, as in Pushkin, in the writer’s own adult lifetime (c . 1820–37).

Act 1 Scene 1. A recreation area in the Summer Gardens . It is spring. Nursemaids and others are sitting, strolling and chatting, while children play at being soldiers, finally marching off. Cheklinsky, a gambler, and Surin, an officer, discuss the preoccupation of Hermann (an engineering officer of German extraction) with gambling; he is always watching others play, yet never participates himself. To Tomsky, another officer, Hermann confesses he is in love, though he still does not know his beloved’s name. Tomsky expresses amazement that Hermann is capable of such a passion, but the latter declares that he will die if his beloved cannot be his. Meanwhile a crowd of promenaders has swarmed in, and now exults in the wonderful weather. Prince Yeletsky appears, and Chekalinsky and Surin congratulate him on his engagement. Asked who his intended is, he indicates Liza (in the opera the Countess’s granddaughter), who has just entered with the Countess, and who recognizes Hermann as the man who has repeatedly appeared beneath her window. Hermann in despair, together with Liza, the Countess, Tomsky and Yeletsky, joins in a quintet, each voicing his or her thoughts, Liza seeming especially agitated on seeing Hermann. The Countess then asks Tomsky who Hermann is, Yeletsky greets Liza, and Hermann sits himself gloomily on a bench.

Tomsky now reveals how the Countess had, as a youthful beauty in Paris, restored her gambling fortunes through the secret of three winning cards which the Comte de St Germain had confided to her ‘at the price of a rendezvous’. Later she had twice told her secret, but a ghost had predicted that she would be killed by a third man who would come, as a lover, to extract it from her. Overhearing this, Hermann nevertheless rejects the temptation the three-card secret offers – and, as a storm breaks, vows Yeletsky shall never have Liza.

Act 1 Scene 2. Liza’s room. A door to the balcony leads into the gard en . It is the day of Liza’s betrothal to Yeletsky. She and her friend, Polina, sing a duet to a group of approving girls. Polina, at the suggestion of a much preoccupied Liza, sings Liza’s favourite song, a sad one that brings on a sad mood – and so she launches into a clapping song to which the girls, but not Liza, dance. The governess appears, chides them for their unbecoming behaviour, the noise of which displeases the Countess, and the girls leave with her. Polina teases Liza, then also leaves. Liza dismisses her maid, Masha; alone, she reflects tearfully on her impending marriage to Yeletsky, then confesses her secret obsession for the stranger who haunts her home.

Suddenly Hermann himself enters from the balcony. Liza threatens to cry out if he does not leave, but he launches into a confession of love. Liza weeps – but is clearly responding. Suddenly the Countess is heard approaching. Signalling Hermann to hide, Liza admits the Countess and her maids. The old woman questions Liza, then leaves with her maids. Hermann emerges, recoiling in horror as he remembers the ghost’s words – but then resumes his pleading. Seeing Liza is weakening, he pretends he will leave. In desperation she cries: ‘I am yours!’

Act 2 Scene 1. A great hall . A masked ball is in progress. The master of ceremonies invites the guests to a fireworks display outside. Chekalinsky, Surin and Tomsky linger to discuss Hermann’s obsession, then leave. Only Yeletsky and Liza remain, and the former sings her an aria of love: then they also leave. Hermann enters the now empty hall: he has a letter from Liza, and is to meet her after the interlude – but again the three cards torment him. The interlude, The Faithf ul Shepherdess , a pastoral entertainment involving three singers, dancers and chorus, begins. A quadrille and sarabande are danced. Prilepa is sad; her beloved, Milozvor (played by Polina), has not joined the dance, but he now enters and declares his love. They duet happily. Zlatogor (played by Tomsky) enters, bearing costly presents. He asks Prilepa to choose between him and Milozvor. While Zlatogor tempts with riches, Milozvor can only offer love. Prilepa chooses Milozvor, and they duet. Amor and Hymen enter with the nuptial crown. Again the quadrille.

The guests talk while Hermann reflects on the fateful prediction – and suddenly encounters the Countess, while covertly Surin mocks him as before: ‘Look, there’s your beloved!’ Liza slips Hermann the key to the garden door, and gives instructions for finding her room the next day – but Hermann insists on tonight. The master of ceremonies announces the arrival of the Empress. There is great excitement as all prepare to received her.

Act 2 Scene 2. The Countess’s bedroom . Hermann enters, surveys the room, would leave if he could but, hearing footsteps, he hides. Maids lead the Countess to her dressing room. Liza and Masha enter, then leave, Liza to her own room. The Countess returns, chooses to sleep in an armchair, muses at length on her past in Paris, dismisses her maids, again muses, then dozes. Hermann emerges. The Countess is terrified. He attempts to reassure her: all he wants is the secret of the cards. But his pleadings and cajolings having failed, he draws a pistol. In terror the Countess falls back dead – and Hermann realizes that her secret has died with her. Disturbed by the noise, Liza enters, now discovering how she has been used. She turns on Hermann, dismissing him. Weeping, she throws herself on the Countess’s body.

Act 3 Scene 1. Hermann’s room in the barracks . It is late evening. Offstage sounds of drums and trumpet calls. Distressed, Hermann is reading a letter from Liza, who now believes he did not wish the Countess’s death, and begs him to meet her on the banks of the Winter Canal at midnight. Sounds of a distant choir startle Hermann, and he recalls how, in the church, the Countess had winked at him from her open coffin. The wind howls, someone appears at the window, then vanishes. Again knocking, the wind blows open the window, the candle is blown out – and Hermann opens the door, to be confronted by the Countess’s ghost. ‘Save Liza, marry her. Three cards will win in turn. Remember: three … seven … ace … three … seven … ace … three …’ Hermann repeats these words as she vanishes.

Act 3 Scene 2. Beside the Winter Canal . Liza, having convinced herself of Hermann’s innocence, awaits him, and sings of her love. Midnight strikes, at first she is in despair, but then Hermann enters. They embrace and sing of their mutual love. He says he must fly, she asks whither, and is stunned by his reply: ‘To the gambling house!’ – and he tells her of the ghost’s instructions. Now she realizes that her worst suspicions have been confirmed, yet still she tries to persuade him to go with her. But Hermann is demented, no longer recognizes her, and Liza throws herself into the canal.

Act 3 Scene 3. A gambling house . Guests, including Chekalinsky, Surin and Tomsky, are playing or dining in a relaxed atmosphere. Yeletsky has come for the first time – a consequence of the collapse of his disastrous love affair. Tomsky supplies a humorous love song: the others join in and dance. Play resumes, and Hermann appears. Yeletsky foresees a duel in prospect, asks Tomsky to be his second – but Hermann only wants to gamble and, to the amazement of all, wagers forty thousand! He stakes on the number three – and wins. Stunned amazement. He stakes on seven – and wins again. He calls for wine. ‘What is our life?’ he sings. ‘A game … Who is lucky here, my friends? Today it’s you, tomorrow ’tis I!’ Despite the urging of the others to take his winnings, Hermann calls for a challenger. Yeletsky steps forward. Hermann stakes on ace – but turns up the queen of spades. The Countess’s ghost appears, smiling at him. Hermann curses her, stabs himself, begs Yeletsky’s forgiveness, then thinks he sees Liza before him. ‘O how I loved you, my angel!’ he whispers as he dies. The chorus prays for the peace of his soul.

*

Like Eugene Onegin , The Queen of Spades opens with the briefest of orchestral introductions, but this one is yet more crucial, for it introduces not one, but three themes relating to the forces that will drive the drama. The opening briefly presages Tomsky’s ballad in Scene 1, in which he tells the tale that will sow in Hermann’s mind the obsession that will bring about his destruction, and the third is the love music with which Hermann will seduce Liza in Scene 2. But heed especially the second, central one – not really a theme, but a tiny three-note motif representing the three fateful cards – the tri karti (three cards) – and which will itself often be heard three times (that is, 3x3:the heightened obsessiveness of this double symbolism is unmissable). This tiny morsel will infiltrate so many moments in the opera that it may haunt the listener, even when it has ceased to haunt Hermann.

An opera has three fundamental elements: its characters, its action and its context. Onegin had concerned itself straight away with its characters, albeit only two marginal ones chatting, then joined by Tatyana and Olga. But The Queen of Spades focuses our attention initially only on the setting. Nurses and governesses, with their charges, are enjoying a spring day in St Petersburg’s Summer Gardens. This choral tableau is extended by a group of children playing at soldiers and giving a demonstration of their competence at parade-ground manoeuvres (no doubt a direct debt to the crowd of urchins who mimic the real-life soldiers in the first scene of Tchaikovsky’s second favourite opera, Bizet’s Carmen ). But all this has been simply a preliminary: what follows is a model of how a first scene can progressively introduce the main characters, and through their exchanges simultaneously provide the information necessary for us to understand what is to come. First we meet Chekalinsky and Surin, who comment on Hermann and his current mood (‘gloomy, like a demon from hell’, as Chekalinsky puts it), then stroll off, to be followed by Hermann himself with Tomsky, to whom (and us) Hermann confesses the reason for his misery: he is in love, even though he still does not know his beloved’s name (note the solo cello tune to which Hermann had entered: its first phrase will become his love theme). They, too, pass on, and a punctuation mark in the main action is provided by a new crowd of promenaders, who comment joyfully on the marvellous weather.

The marshalling of the opera’s central characters is then resumed and completed. Hermann and Tomsky re-enter, still in conversation (Hermann elaborating on his distressed state), Prince Yeletsky appears, then Chekalinsky and Surin, who congratulate the Prince on his engagement (again more information for us): Yeletsky and Hermann simultaneously, though independently, extol their beloveds, and finally we meet the two characters who, with Hermann, will be central to the whole opera: the Countess (her entry is readily recognized, for the three-card motif is briefly heard in the orchestra) and Liza, whom the Prince identifies as his bride-to-be.

This has been a most skilfully planned beginning. Now, as he had done in Onegin in the quartet that had followed hard upon Onegin’s entry, so Tchaikovsky provides a quintet in which the five principal players – the two women, the two lovers and Tomsky – will be singled out for our attention. Of course we cannot possibly hear their every word or phrase, but we shall catch enough to realize that all are, for a variety of reasons, disturbed (as each sings at the end: ‘I am afraid!’). And note how, during the exchanges that follow the quintet, the threecard motif is again heard in the orchestra.

All the main participants being now assembled, it is time to set the opera’s fateful plot in motion – which Tomsky does through his ballad, the largest set-piece movement of this scene, and an extended narration that brings a passage of relative stability to the action itself. Tomsky, first using recitative, recounts how the Countess in her youth had come by the secret of the three cards, then concludes with a four-stanza song. The first sets the three-section pattern of each stanza (though the music of the third stanza will be mostly new). It begins by echoing something of the introduction’s opening melody, then breaks away and briefly introduces other, very atmospheric music, and finally it rounds off each stanza with a sort of parody of the first musical phrase from Hermann’s earlier confession of love (what I have labelled his love theme), now set – very significantly – to the mantra that recurs throughout the opera: ‘Tri karti, tri karti, tri karti! ’ Thus Tchaikovsky deftly embodies in a single phrase the opera’s conflicting forces: love (in the music), and obsession (in the words).

The remainder of this scene requires little further comment. It takes place against a gathering storm, a meteorological metaphor of Hermann’s inner turmoil. Chekalinsky and Surin tease Hermann with the ghost’s words, and all take cover except Hermann, who himself reflects on these same words – yet, despite the temptation, he still opts to possess Liza rather than riches.

As in Onegin , the second Scene of The Queen of Spades is intimate, and culminates in a love scene, though whereas in the earlier opera this had been a personal and ecstatic celebration of a first experience of love, in the latter it is a calculated seduction. The duet and song that entertain the girls in Liza’s room are sentimental romances, Polina’s a skilful reworking of an arioso from Moscow , Tchaikovsky’s Coronation Cantata of 1883. (Why waste a good piece composed for a larger ‘occasional’ composition that might never be performed again?) Polina is a cameo role of a kind that Tchaikovsky included elsewhere in his operas, the character entering only once, yet making an impact greater than might have been expected from so brief an appearance. (Gremin, Tatyana’s elderly and adoring husband in Onegin , is perhaps the most notable instance in Tchaikovsky’s operas.) An even briefer appearance is that of the French governess who interrupts the girls’ Russian dance, reproving them for behaviour ill becoming young ladies: she is a delicious, twittery being, neatly conjured. All this makes an excellent foil for the very serious matter to come: Hermann’s intervention, and the ensuing love scene. This is beautifully prepared. First comes Polina’s teasing of Liza, and then, as the maid prepares Liza’s bed, the cor anglais’s quiet introduction of the music to which Liza will herself, when alone, tearfully reflect on the prospect of a good but loveless marriage – and then Liza’s shift of mood as her thoughts turn with mounting excitement to her mysterious lover (note how the orchestral tone shifts towards the end of all this, and a measure of ecstasy enters). As for the love scene itself, this impresses above all for the way it unfolds. First there is a stunned silence when Hermann appears and he and Liza stare at each other; then comes Liza’s panic, Hermann’s almost tearful initial entreaties (substantiated by the orchestra, which now, for the first time within the opera itself, gently picks up the love music that had ended the opera’s introduction), and Liza’s pity as she, now quietly, begs him to leave. Hermann makes a second appeal, this time pleading rather than urgent, and at the end takes her hand, which she does not withdraw, a sign of hope that prompts a sudden outburst from him, abruptly terminated by the approach and entry of the Countess. The latter’s intrusion also brings sudden, quiet irruptions of the three-card motif, and for a moment these continue to haunt Hermann, even after the Countess has left. But quickly recovering his self-possession, he returns to his calculated pleading until, clearly sensing that he is winning despite Liza’s desperate pleas that he should leave, he threatens to do just that. The stratagem works: Liza yields.

This has been a highly personal and very crucial scene: Act 2 Scene 2 is the very opposite. It is set in a Great Hall and is hardly relevant to the main dramatic thread, though it does provide a context in which we can learn that Liza wishes to meet Hermann again, and where she manages to pass to him the key to her room. Yet there is another intimate encounter that should not be passed over here, and for which room is provided, once everyone else has been tempted away to the firework display. It is a very troubled Yeletsky who now hymns Liza in a bid to gain the affection, if not the love, of his young affianced bride, and in the Prince’s declaration, as sensitive as it is dignified, Tchaikovsky skilfully suggests a man who is both strong and caring. As for the broader purpose of this whole scene, it is to provide a brilliant foil to the three very intimate scenes that will follow, and to allow the chorus and dancers to have a role in the opera as providers of a formal entertainment for the aristocratic guests, with the Faithful Shepherdess interlude offering opportunities for some solo dancing.

And, having mentioned the Faithful Shepherdess interlude, I have touched on what is perhaps the most intriguing single feature of this scene. Mozart was Tchaikovsky’s idol – and nowhere in his work is his adoration of that composer more manifest than here. From this scene’s very beginning, both in the orchestral introduction and in the chorus that follows, Tchaikovsky gave himself up to the spell of Mozart where he could. Take this substantial orchestral prelude and opening chorus, incorporate the voice parts of the latter into the instrumental parts of the former, and you have an abbreviated sonata-form movement such as a late eighteenth-century composer might have produced, and this pastiche treatment is extended into the exchanges between some of Hermann’s colleagues ahead of the entry of Liza. As for the later Faithful Shepherdess interlude, it is again back to Mozart, evidently with some direct quotations from, or at least allusions to, pieces by him or his contemporaries. It has been suggested that this Milozvor–Prilepa–Zlatogor tale has ironic resonances with the Hermann–Liza–Yeletsky drama, but personally I find this difficult to accept. I also – again personally – question whether it was wise to interpolate into this otherwise taut opera such a protracted interlude of very charming, but also very slight music, though it certainly reinforces the contrasting background to the events of the following scene in the Countess’s bedroom. As for this ballroom scene’s own conclusion, Tchaikovsky returns to the music to which Hermann’s colleagues had talked ahead of Yeletsky’s declaration of love, and again they covertly torment him, with the result that Hermann wonders whether he is indeed going mad. Liza passes him the key, tells him to come the following night, but Hermann refuses to delay: he will come tonight. Finally the master of ceremonies announces the approach of the Empress herself (Catherine the Great), and all line up to receive her – though the curtain had to come down before her actual appearance, since in 1890 it was still unlawful to impersonate a Russian Emperor or Empress on the stage.

And so to the heart of The Queen of Spades . This fourth scene, set in the Countess’s room, contains some of the most radical music Tchaikovsky ever composed, and it is as atmospheric and tense as any scene in opera. Even before the curtain has risen we can feel an irrepressible unease in the muted-strings introduction, with its obsessive, naggingly nervous six-note figure in the violas, played 210 times without a break (as with the high sustained C in the Sleeping Beauty ’s Sleep Entr’acte, Tchaikovsky organized this in a shift pattern (two bars on, two bars off) to make it tolerable for the players – and who might otherwise have lost count!). Note also the four-note pizzicato figure that haunts the bass. As for the restless tune above, this is a child of Hermann’s quietly pleading theme just ahead of the Countess’s intervention in the bedroom scene: after all, love is still a part of the motivation that has brought him here. No opera contains an air of suspense stronger than that which is conjured here by Tchaikovsky’s brilliantly conceived music. Hermann steals in and surveys the room until he hears the Countess and her maids approaching, then hides. The maids’ song is a gay one – no doubt they are well practised in trying to counteract their mistress’s persistent dour and grumpy moods and ill temper. Having dressed her for the night and installed her in her chair, they remain as their mistress begins to muse on her distant past. Note the orchestra’s descending six-note scale that will now haunt the old woman’s musings (an echo of Tchaikovsky’s Fate theme?) – and note, in due course, the melody heard quietly in the orchestra: this is a French tune, ‘Vive Henri IV’, a song the Countess herself had sung in her youth, to the admiration of noble admirers. Even more – note the lengthy, French-texted song she next sings: this is, in fact, an aria from the 1784 opera Richard, Coeur de Lion by the French composer, André Grétry, another memory from the days of the Countess’s social glory. Suddenly she realizes that her maids are still in attendance, angrily dismisses them, begins repeating Grétry’s aria, but finally drifts into sleep as the six-note orchestral figure falls ever lower until it, too, fades.

The critical point on which the whole opera will turn has now come. The dramatic pace has slowed to stasis; when it quietly resumes, it is the thrice-heard three-card motif that steals in, Hermann’s emergence signalled by an agitated resurgence of his love theme, the Countess’s mute terror by quiet bursts of intensely nervous music. I believe that, with such gripping music, little further comment is necessary here. Hermann makes his appeal to the old woman, his tone at first controlled, finally peremptory. He pulls his pistol, the Countess’s terror music briefly recurs, then she collapses. Hermann takes her hand, makes a last appeal, then realizes the truth: she is dead – and the muted string theme, a derivative from Hermann’s love music, which had opened the scene, rises powerfully in the orchestra. Roused by the noise, Liza bursts in and the terrible truth of what has happened dawns on her. In tearful anger she peremptorily dismisses Hermann as the orchestra blares out what had once been his love theme. Both Liza’s and Hermann’s hopes have been shattered.

The fraught, if less tempestuous, mood is maintained in the sixth scene, which shifts to Hermann’s barracks. The orchestral preamble is the longest in the opera, the offstage simulation of distant chanting by a choir punctuated by bugle calls and extended side-drum rolls. When the curtain at length rises, Hermann is discovered reading Liza’s letter (initially spoken), finishing against the background of the offstage choir as he recalls with horror the wink the dead Countess had given him from her coffin at the funeral service. But a sudden and sustained orchestral outburst is preface to the scene’s spectral end. Hermann rises, terrified, allusions to his love theme alternating with tiny eruptions of the three-card motif, and an even more powerful orchestral outburst marks his opening of the door, and his confrontation with the ghost. Then on a monotone, quietly and implacably, the spectre gives her instructions and discloses the three-card secret itself. The stillness of this is chilling. Her mission fulfilled, she turns and disappears, leaving a mesmerized Hermann to pick up and mechanically repeat her last words: three … seven … ace … three … seven …

The scene by the Winter Canal has no place in Pushkin, but was invented by Tchaikovsky himself because, so he reasoned, the audience would want to know what had happened to Liza. Her aria is one of grief, but of a different kind from Hermann’s – not an expression of anger and distress at a scheme thwarted, but of the pain of a vulnerable woman who has been betrayed in love, but who now hopes to retrieve the once promised happiness. It is perhaps the most direct, most openhearted piece of the opera; it is also the most overtly Russian. Yet midnight strikes, despair replaces hope – but then Hermann rushes in. Clearly concerned to give the scene some amplitude, Tchaikovsky allows Hermann to appear first as an honest lover, and thus provide an excuse for an amorous exchange before his true motivation emerges. Frankly, this is not really Tchaikovsky at his best, and it is, wisely, relatively short. When Hermann reveals his true objective, the ghost’s command music from the previous scene is recalled, and Liza’s frenzy on discovering, for a second time, Hermann’s duplicity brings a return to her earlier despair music. As Hermann’s excitement grows, the three-card motif is heard, and the scene ends with Hermann rushing out and Liza throwing herself into the canal.

If this last scene has been the opera’s weakest, the final scene amply restores the situation. The liveliness of its opening seems all the greater for following on the grim, dark events of the preceding three scenes, Tchaikovsky breaking the substantial stretch of conviviality only briefly to note the entry of Yeletsky, a surprise presence, but a necessary one so that he can play his ironic role as the instrument of Hermann’s destruction. Otherwise, the pervasive mood is festive, with Tomsky’s mischievous love song spurring his audience to a vigorous dance accompanied by whistling and shouting. No sooner has the company sat down to supper than Hermann appears and the action suddenly becomes significant – as the intrusion of the thrice-heard three-card motif signifies. Hermann’s first two throws are quickly dealt with, a threefold statement of the card motif signifying the moment when each of his huge bets is laid, the moment of play prompting a taut rhythmic outburst from the orchestra, Hermann’s success greeted with corporate incredulity the first time, by a stunned mutter the second, thus affording space for Hermann’s defiant song where, at last, he reveals his true self. ‘What is our life? A game! Who’s happy? Today it’s you, tomorrow ’tis I!’ he sings, a combination of defiance and fatalism driving him on to the final throw. This time only once is the three-card motif heard – and this time its final note is a wrong one. Hermann has lost all, the ghost of the Countess appears and smiles at him, he stabs himself, begs Yeletsky’s forgiveness, and reaffirms his love for Liza, the orchestra quietly recalling his love music as he dies. The chorus joins in an unaccompanied prayer for the dead Hermann, and the opera ends with the orchestra again recalling his love music.

27

A Relationship Ends: American Tour

For his Italian expedition, during which he would compose The Queen of Spades , Tchaikovsky had been deprived of the company of Alexey, for the latter had remained at Frolovskoye to tend Fekla, his wife, who was dying of consumption. In consequence, he had been replaced in Florence by Modest’s valet, Nazar. Tchaikovsky found the Florence hotel to be an ideal choice – inexpensive, and with few other guests. His routine was a typical Tchaikovsky one: rise before eight, read the papers, work till twelve-thirty, dine, go for a walk till three, spend an hour with Nazar watching the world go by, then work till dinner at seven. All this while, Nazar was keeping a personal diary of his temporary master’s daily activities. It was an on-the-spot record made by a very dispassionate observer, as such probably giving a more genuinely objective account – and certainly a more engagingly detailed one – than any other source. If we are to judge from Nazar’s narrative tone, his relationship with his temporary master was very relaxed. A sample will do:

P[yotr] I[lich] is in a good mood today. He has already begun the second scene and I can see it’s going well. Every time before he finishes work I go into his room and say that it’s time for lunch or supper. I don’t know – perhaps I disturb him by this, but he doesn’t seem to show any displeasure. If I’d noticed this, of course I wouldn’t have gone in. I went in at seven. P. I. hadn’t yet finished. I said: ‘It’s time to stop.’ He answered: ‘Yes’ – and then goes on writing notes. I say: ‘It’ll soon be seven o’clock.’ ‘Coming,’ he says, and writes yet another note, striking a piano key. I continue standing. He pulls out his watch, opens it. ‘There’s twenty minutes to go. I can work another ten.’ I said something, but he replied: ‘Let me have just ten minutes.’ I left. Ten minutes later he came to me. ‘Well, I’ve finished,’ and he began asking what I was doing (I had been writing; as he came in I had closed my diary), and went into his room. P.I. began walking up and down the room, but I stood by the table. He talked about Feklusha, Alexey and suchlike. For the first time I heard from Pyotr Ilich that his new composition would get a flattering reception. ‘If God grants, the opera will go so well that you will pay off [my] debts, Nazar.’ ‘God grant that it does go well,’ I said – and thought to myself, ‘And may God grant you good health.’

Matters other than the opera occupied Tchaikovsky while in Florence, and two would be solved very satisfactorily. The first concerned Antonina who, Tchaikovsky heard, had written to Rubinstein, asking to be appointed to a senior post in the Moscow Conservatoire. This extraordinary request posed no direct threat to Tchaikovsky himself, but it was a sign of how unbalanced Antonina continued to be, and he recognized she could still make trouble for him. Too upset to work, for a day he agonized, then decided to take a stand, writing very bluntly to her that her request was preposterous, that since she behaved like a child, she would be punished like one, and that for a year he would reduce her allowance by two-thirds. Jurgenson implemented the decision – and Antonina crumbled. At last Tchaikovsky had found the strategy that would subdue this troublesome woman, and she would disappear for ever from his personal life. The second matter had to do with the Moscow RMS. Tchaikovsky’s efforts on its behalf during the previous season had cost him dear. He had already undertaken to conduct six concerts in the following season, but the pressures on him to conduct elsewhere in Russia and abroad were growing. There were also problems caused by the RMS’s internal politics, and he could see far worse conflicts involving him ahead, and these might become public. The result was that he resigned his position as a Director of the Moscow branch, and also withdrew from the six concerts he had undertaken to conduct, urging that Ziloti should be assigned three of them.

Having completed the vocal score of The Queen of Spades in Florence, in early April Tchaikovsky moved on to Rome to score the opera. For a week he managed happily to alternate work on this with enjoyment of Rome’s civic and cultural riches, but then news of his presence leaked, and unwanted demands on his time began to mount. At the beginning of May he was back in St Petersburg in time to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. Another week, and he was home in Frolovskoye.

Here he found little to cheer him. One of the location’s great charms, the surrounding woods, had been felled. ‘Only the grove behind the church remains. There’s nowhere to walk! ’ he lamented to Modest. He visited Feklusha’s grave, and approved the memorial Alexey had mounted over it. Nor were matters in Moscow any better, for he felt the way in which the RMS was evolving was a betrayal of those things that mattered to him. As for St Petersburg, that too was now a place where his appearance could immediately be the signal for very varied demands to be made on his time. (He had already rejected a request from a former pupil to be godfather to her child: he would be prepared to accept by proxy, but his excuse given for not attending was that he feared he might drop the baby.) Yet with the opera scored and his time more free, within five days he had set about redeeming a promise given in 1886 to compose a piece for the St Petersburg Chamber Music Society who, as noted earlier, had made him an honorary member. He had jotted down the main theme of what would be the slow movement while engaged on The Queen of Spades in Florence (thus prompting the new work’s title, Souvenir de Florence ), and the more he progressed, the more he felt satisfied, though he admitted that the medium he had chosen – a sextet made up of two violins, two violas, and two cellos – had initially proved a challenge. A private performance, followed by its premiere in December, left Tchaikovsky not entirely happy with the piece, and a year later he heavily revised the third and fourth movements.

String Sextet in D, Souvenir de Florence ***(*)

[This large, but mostly relaxed piece, has much charm, and the first two movements are particularly fine. In general it makes easier listening than Tchaikovsky’s earlier chamber works, and more experienced listeners may find further help from me through the first three movements unnecessary; for others I provide below a brief guide. However, the finale is more complicated, as my commentary on this movement reveals. This sextet is frequently heard played by a chamber orchestra, but unless it has been very judiciously rehearsed, the heavier sound can become wearing.]

None of Tchaikovsky’s chamber works has a more positive opening, and the first movement has an impressively broad but rather gentle second subject, the exposition finally winding down and fading almost completely. The large development overlaps with the recapitulation, and on first hearing you may easily miss the actual point of transfer, but if you do, you will almost certainly soon realize that it has, in fact, already arrived. The recapitulation of the second subject and the (relatively) short coda follow.

The slow movement is in ternary form. Following on the sonorous richness of its introduction, the simplicity of its main section is perhaps even more striking, especially when one notes the great span that Tchaikovsky spins out of melody that is very simple and very touching, whether heard as a single violin line or with that line in eloquent dialogue with a cello before they are joined by a viola in preparation for the whole section’s strong climax; Tchaikovsky never wrote anything more engaging that this section. The music of the central section, directed to be played at the tip of the bow, sounds almost furtive, and provides little more than a breathing space before the first section returns, the violin and cello now exchanging roles.

After this very affecting music, the third movement moves us, at least initially, into a fresh, folky world. Also in ternary form, its opening might suggest a gentle dance in prospect, though the relative complexities in some of what soon follows undermines this assumption (note the neat, gently witty coda that rounds off this main section). The movement’s flighty centre is more plausibly a dance – assuming, that is, that the dancers can keep up with it. It is very brief, and the opening section then returns seamlessly – though loudly – out of it.

Even more folky is the lively opening of the finale, though this movement will also go stylistically to the opposite extreme by incorporating a fugue. In fact, a taste of the fuguing to come is provided early on during the transition to the second subject, the latter turning out to be a sturdy and broad tune that will lead straight into the very brief development (try, perhaps, to spot the moment when the slow chordal introduction to the slow movement is slipped in (though here it is played much faster): this is the point at which the exposition ends). The recapitulation begins with the folky first subject presented very loudly, and then comes the full-scale fugue, its subject based on the movement’s opening folky tune, but later also drawing in the quite different subject of the little fugato near the movement’s beginning. No doubt this studied example of high academic expertise was there to impress the significant German membership of the St Petersburg Chamber Music Society – and I have no doubt it did.

Tchaikovsky’s three-and-a-half months in Italy had been succeeded by three in Frolovskoye, with only rare trips to Moscow or St Petersburg, and relatively few visitors. But by the later summer he was longing for the company of more relatives and friends, and being now free of winter commitments to the Moscow RMS, he passed the last week of August with Modest and Kolya Konradi, the latter now twenty-two years old, at Grankino; then, with Kolya as companion, he headed for Kamenka.

His sister’s home had now become a calmer, but much sadder place. Two nieces, Tanya and Vera, were dead, and a third, Natalya, had already wedded Vera’s widower and departed, while Sasha, their mother, was a cause for major concern. Worn down emotionally by domestic stress, she was grossly overweight, and liable to fits from her long dependence on drugs, to which she had now added alcohol. After a rather melancholy fortnight Tchaikovsky and Kolya moved on for two days to Kopïlova where Nikolay von Meck, Tchaikovsky’s niece Anna, and their two children had an estate; thence they directed themselves to Tiflis, arriving on 19 September and installing themselves in a flat, which afforded Tchaikovsky some protection from the very active social life of brother Anatoly’s wife, Parasha. For a fortnight their living was relaxed, and Tchaikovsky could set about a new composition – a symphonic ballad, The Voyevoda . This was based not on Ostrovsky’s play, which had been the basis of his first opera, but on a ballad by Pushkin, in which a provincial governor (the voyevoda) returns home to find his wife in the garden with her lover. He orders his servant to shoot the man but the servant shoots the voyevoda instead. Tchaikovsky worked on it for about a week; then on 4 October he received a letter from Nadezhda von Meck. Little did he know that this was the harbinger of one of the most distressing events in all his life.

The letter itself was very cordial, though sad. There had been a myriad of problems in his patroness’s own family, but as far as Tchaikovsky himself was concerned, its tone contained nothing to alarm him, and its ending was characteristically warm:

Forgive me, my dear, that I am plaguing you with my complainings; hearing them is no joy for anyone. Keep well, my dear, matchless friend, have a good rest, and do not forget one whose love for you is boundless.

 

    NADEZHDA VON MECK

P.S. Please address your next letter to Moscow.

Though she did write once more, that letter has been lost, and this present one proved to be her last surviving written communication with Tchaikovsky. However, we may readily guess some of the missing letter’s contents from Tchaikovsky’s reply. His patroness too had been involved in the disasters she had described, and she could no longer afford to pay his allowance. And with this she now wished their correspondence to cease.

For Tchaikovsky it was an appalling shock. ‘My dear, dear friend,’ he wrote:

The news contained in your letter deeply saddened me, though not for myself, but for you . That is not at all an empty phrase. Of course I should be lying if I said that such a radical reduction in my budget will have no effect upon my material welfare. But it will affect it to a much smaller degree than you perhaps think. The point is that in recent years my income has greatly increased, and there is no reason to think that it will not continually and rapidly grow. Thus if, from the endless number of circumstances you have to worry about, you are sparing some small thought for me also – then for God’s sake, I beg you, rest assured that I have not experienced even the slightest passing regret at the thought of the material deprivation that has befallen me …

As for her conclusion about how he must have reacted to her news –

The last words of your letter hurt me a little. Do you really believe me capable of remembering you only while I was using your money? Could I really even for one moment forget what you have done for me, and how much I am indebted to you? I can say without any exaggeration that you saved me, and that I should probably have gone out of my mind and perished if you had not come to my aid. No, my dear friend, be assured that I shall remember this to my dying breath, and will bless you. I am glad that it is now, when you can no longer share your resources with me, that I can with my whole heart express my boundless, fervent gratitude, which is simply incapable of being expressed in words.

But this was only one side of Tchaikovsky’s feelings at the turn of events, and the letter he wrote to Jurgenson some days later has a very different tone:

I have borne this blow philosophically, but all the same I was disagreeably struck and surprised. She had written so many times that I was guaranteed this subsidy to my dying breath. Now I have had to disabuse myself; now I shall have to live differently, and on a different scale, and shall probably have to seek some employment in St Petersburg with a good salary. I’m very, very, very hurt , just hurt . My relationship with her was such that her lavish giving was never burdensome to me. Now, retrospectively, it is; my pride is wounded, my confidence in her unbounded readiness to support me materially and bear every kind of sacrifice for me has been deceived. Now I wish that she was completely ruined so that she would need my help. But then, you see, I know perfectly well that, as we would see it, she’s still terribly rich; in a word, a sort of sick, silly joke has occurred which I find shameful and sickening.

While the narrative I have recorded of the kindly, positive and generous side to Tchaikovsky’s nature in his relationships with other people is well founded on fact, this letter now shows there could also be another side to him. Of course Tchaikovsky was right: she still was ‘terribly rich’, but for him it would mean the abandonment of his hopes of purchasing an apartment in St Petersburg and a house at or near Frolovskoye. Nor was it long before he heard that her financial position had indeed been restored. But she had forbidden him to write to her, and he continued for some months to correspond with Wladislaw Pachulski, a young Pole who had suceeded Kotek as her resident violinist, and who had also been an aspiring (but untalented) composer whom Tchaikovsky had reluctantly coached at his patroness’s request, and who in the meantime had become one of her sons-in-law. Pachulski was now in a very powerful strategic position, and though he would transmit cordial but formal messages from his mother-in-law, yet the embargo on direct communication remained absolute.

After eight months of this Tchaikovsky could contain himself no longer, and wrote the bitterest of letters to Pachulski:

I believe entirely that Nadezhda Filaretovna is ill, weak, and her nerves disordered, and that she cannot write to me as before. What distresses, troubles and, speaking frankly, does hurt me deeply is not that she does not write to me, but that she has lost all interest in me. Not once has she entrusted you to ask me how I am living, and what is happening to me. I have tried through you to establish a regular relationship with N.F. through correspondence, but every one of your letters has been merely a courteous reply. In the country during the autumn I read through her earlier letters. Neither her illness nor her misfortunes nor her material difficulties, it would seem, could have altered those feelings which are expressed in those letters. Yet they have altered. Perhaps it was just because I never personally knew N.F. that I imagined her as an ideal being. I could not imagine fickleness in such a demigoddess – it seemed to me that the earth’s globe would crumble to little pieces rather than that N.F. would become another person in relation to me. But the latter has happened, and this has turned topsy-turvy my attitudes towards people, my trust in the best of them. It has disrupted my calm, poisoned that very portion of happiness given to me by Fate. Of course, though not wanting this, N.F. has behaved very cruelly towards me. Never have I felt myself so humbled, has my pride been so wounded as now. And what is most painful of all: in view of N.F.’s health I cannot, because I fear to distress and upset her, tell her all that torments me. I cannot express myself – and that alone could relieve me. Of course, not a word of this to N.F.

Pachulski’s reply was very matter of fact, and he returned Tchaikovsky’s letter to him. Nadezhda Filaretovna’s illness, he wrote, had brought a great change in his patroness that had affected all around her, himself included – though if Tchaikovsky would only write to her direct, Pachulski was sure she would respond wholeheartedly. But she had forbidden Tchaikovsky to do this. Their correspondence was over.

Nevertheless, there may have been another, and more sensitive reason for her own refusal to write. While at Kopïlovo only days before receiving her final surviving letter, Tchaikovsky had been told by her son, Nikolay, of the increasing difficulty his mother was experiencing in letter-writing, and this was supported to me personally by Nikolay’s daughter, Galina von Meck, whom I met in 1984 in Richmond, Surrey, shortly before her death. She confirmed that her grandmother did indeed have an atrophied arm which made writing virtually impossible in her later years, adding that the reason she would not dictate a letter to Tchaikovsky was that what she had to write to him was for his eyes alone, and should remain a secret from all others. But Galina also believed that there had been a final reconciliation between her grandmother and Tchaikovsky. For some three years Galina’s mother, Anna, had tried to persuade her composer-uncle to talk about the rupture, but he would say nothing. Then in August 1893, only weeks before his sudden death, Tchaikovsky had approached Anna, who was about to leave for Nice to take her turn in nursing her dying mother-in-law, asking her to tell Nadezhda that he regretted his silence (which she neverthless had prescribed) over the past three years, and begged to be forgiven. The apology was wholeheartedly accepted, and the news was passed to Tchaikovsky.

I cannot say that the lines of evidence I have used here are all totally reliable, though I have no reason to doubt that there is a core of truth in all this. What I most vividly remember is Galina herself telling me the story, and the last words we exchanged. She was in her nineties, lying on a chaise-longue, and as I bent over to take her hand in farewell, she put her other hand on my arm, looked me in the eye, and said, ‘And you will write that they were reconciled?’ I said I would report what she had told me. I cannot, of course, guarantee that it is the truth, though I find it plausible.

It was a week before his patroness’s first letter arrived that Tchaikovsky had settled to the composition of his symphonic ballad, The Voyevoda , and despite the anxiety prompted by her letter, he completed the sketches within a further fortnight, though it would be another year before the piece was scored. By that time Tchaikovsky was having serious doubts about it. Some of his friends, including Taneyev, also expressed reservations, and though the piece was successful with the audience when Tchaikovsky conducted its premiere, he himself turned violently against it and, on returning to the artists’ room, he began ripping the score to pieces, then turned to the attendant and ordered him to collect the orchestral parts. Ziloti, who was the promoter of the concert, recorded what followed:

Seeing his excitement and knowing that the score’s fate now also threatened the parts, I decided on a desperate remedy, and said, ‘Pardon me, Pyotr Ilich, here in this concert I am the master and not you, and only I can give the orders’ – and I immediately instructed the attendant to collect all the orchestral parts and take them to my apartment. I spoke all this so sternly, so brazenly, that Pyotr Ilich was, as they say, flabbergasted. He only muttered quietly, ‘How dare you talk to me like that!’ and I replied, ‘We’ll discuss this another time.’ At that moment visitors entered the room and with this our confrontation ended.

Tchaikovsky did indeed destroy the score the next day, but the parts belonged to Ziloti, who retained them, using them to reconstruct the piece after Tchaikovsky’s death. It appears that Taneyev, having heard The Voyevoda , had radically changed his evaluation of it, voicing regret that he had so misjudged it as to have threatened its survival.

What must still seem puzzling to us now is Tchaikovsky’s own fierce rejection of The Voyevoda , for nine days after the concert he could still write to Jurgenson that he was

profoundly convinced it is a work that compromises me. If I were an inexperienced youth it would be a different matter, but a hoary old man ought to go forward, or else should remain on the heights he has already reached. If such a thing recurs in the future, I shall again tear it to pieces – and then give up composing altogether.

Tchaikovsky was, surely, far too harsh on himself. It would be very tempting to suggest that the trauma of Nadezhda von Meck’s action had something to do with the work’s tone, but it was sketched when that incident had scarcely begun. In many ways The Voyevoda is a work in which Tchaikovsky took a leap forward, and there is one point in which he did exactly that, for the final bars anticipate very closely that last, most violent eruption in the first movement of the Sixth Symphony – his greatest orchestral work, and also, as Fate would decree, his last completed composition.

Symphonic Ballad: The Voyevoda ***(*)

[This is a maverick piece. It is rarely heard in concerts, yet it contains some of Tchaikovsky’s most radical music. Barely half the length of Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, let alone Francesca da Rimini, it does not fit comfortably into conventional concert programmes; nor, perhaps, is it, as a totality, as instantly appealing. Yet it makes for a fasctnating experience quite unlike that offered by any other piece by Tchaikovsky. For the adventurous listener? ]

If the story of Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades had been ironic, even more so (as we have noted) is that of Tchaikovsky’s ballad The Voyevoda . Tchaikovsky’s very concise piece (it lasts little more than ten minutes) is cast as a ternary structure; its flanks are the province of the wronged husband, its centre the love scene. The music concerned with the voyevoda himself is some of Tchaikovsky’s most radical, its desperate urgency compacting its fierceness; by contrast, the love music is some of Tchaikovsky’s most opulent, its colouring enriched by his incorporation of a celesta, a very new keyboard percussion instrument at the time.

The very eloquence and directness of The Voyevoda renders more detailed commentary hardly necessary, but a few additional points may be helpful. The piece opens with what is clearly the intimidating approach of the returning voyevoda , the urgent rhythmic figure that underpins this also resurging, but furtively, in the quiet section that follows; no doubt the muffled mutterings here on bass clarinet mimic the voyevoda ’s words as he spies the lovers. The central love scene is its own advocate, but the ending (the urgent rhythmic figure again suggesting the voyevoda ’s nervous rage, with bass clarinet mutterings mimicking his words), is as brutal as it is concise. The Voyevoda is rarely played in concerts, which is a great pity, but I imagine it could produce some challenges in rehearsal if the performance is to be faithful to the story’s spirit.

Fame comes at a price, and by now no one knew this better than Tchaikovsky. The pressures on his personal time increased, and it is unnecessary to detail such things here. In a slight but nevertheless significant way he had cause to notice the price of his heightened prestige when, on returning from Tiflis at the beginning of November, he was met at the station in Moscow by a whole group of his friends, who promptly bore him off to a restaurant to honour his return. Already Jurgenson could see reason to expand his publications of Tchaikovsky’s music. The former had earlier begun issuing a collected edition of the piano music, and now he was turning his attention to the songs. However, if the songs were to be published also in transposed editions (i.e., moved to higher or lower keys to suit the requirements of different voices – that is, from soprano down to bass), then Tchaikovsky insisted he would have to check these himself, and this would absorb much time. The premiere of The Queen of Spades in mid-December was followed by a trip to Kiev to conduct the premiere of a second production being mounted in that city. On arrival Tchaikovsky excused himself from this undertaking, offering instead to conduct an orchestral concert four days ahead of the opera’s opening. As for the first night of the latter, the enthusiasm of the Kiev audience eclipsed that of St Petersburg. After the first scene there was an ovation, and there would be more to follow, but the cumulative excitement of this was also exhausting. As Tchaikovsky himself recalled:

It would be ludicrous even to compare the enthusiasm of the reception in St Petersburg with that in Kiev. It was something incredible, but I’m unimaginably tired and, at bottom, am constantly aching and suffering. Uncertainty about the immediate future also torments me. Should I turn down a concert tour abroad? My head’s empty and I haven’t the slightest wish to work.

Kamenka was the short-term answer, and was the more cheering because Sasha seemed much improved in health. But Tchaikovsky had already agreed to compose a double-bill – a one-act opera, Iolanta , and a ballet, The Nutcracker – for the 1891–92 season of the Imperial Theatres in St Petersburg, and meanwhile he had to honour his promise, given in 1888 to his actor friend, Lucien Guitry, to provide the incidental music for a production of Hamlet , to be mounted only weeks ahead in Paris. By mid-January he was home in Frolovskoye and, unenthusiastic as he was, he as usual discharged this undertaking as promised. And while all this was happening, requests to appear abroad were proliferating, among which was one to conduct in the concerts celebrating the inauguration in April of the new Carnegie Hall in New York. The fee would be $2,500, and was irresistible. Reckoning that a concert in Paris would be timely, Tchaikovsky requested his Paris publisher Mackar to make arrangements. From Paris he would proceed to Le Havre for the Atlantic crossing. On 22 March he was in the French capital.

Tchaikovsky had already managed a little work on The Nutcracker , but his fortnight in the French capital was swamped by visits and invitations to dine out, his only personal pleasures coming from the presence also of Modest, Sapelnikov and the pianist Sophie Menter, whom Tchaikovsky had known and come to like during the 1880s in St Petersburg. His concert at the Châtelet, which included the Second Piano Concerto and Third Suite, was a tremendous success resulting in yet more demands on his time. There being little chance of composing in Paris, on 10 April he moved on to Rouen, where he intended to remain eight days before embarking at Le Havre. However, his mood was gloomy, there were bursts of longing for Russia, and working proved very difficult. Realizing that he could never have the double-bill ready for the coming season, he wrote to Vsevolozhsky, explaining that it would have to be postponed until the following one. The pressure being now relieved, and with three days left before embarkation, he decided to return to Paris. Finding a cabinet de lecture , he entered to glance at the Russian papers. Picking up a copy of New Time , he turned to the back page – and what he read caused him to rush out into the street. Sasha was dead.

For some hours, it seems, a dazed Tchaikovsky wandered the Paris streets, only much later heading for Menter’s and Sapelnikov’s lodgings. They provided him with a bed for the night, and the following morning he decided to continue with the American tour, for he had already bought his ticket and been given a handsome advance on which he had drawn heavily. The voyage began sadly, for a young man threw himself overboard and Tchaikovsky, as one of the few passengers who knew German, was called on to translate the suicide note. But soon his spirits rallied, and among his fellow passengers he found much to fascinate, and sometimes amuse him. There were alarming occurrences – a full-scale storm in mid-Atlantic, which proved he was not immune to seasickness, and fog off Newfoundland, with the ship crawling and the ominous blare of the hooter sounding every half-minute. His purse was stolen from his cabin – and then his celebrity identity was discovered, bringing with it a deluge of demands on his time. Finally the ship was struck by a hurricane. On docking in New York, a delegation of five led by Morris Reno, who was in charge of Carnegie Hall, met him, piloted him through Customs, and took him to his hotel, where he gave way to a flood of tears, then took a walk up Broadway, was surprised by the number of Negroes and the height of some of the buildings (‘Nine [sic !] storeys’), returned to his hotel, again gave way to tears – but then wrote to Anatoly and Parasha, admitting that when the tour was all over, he would recall it with pleasure.

Three things were to strike him about America. First was the hotel accommodation, with its private bath, water-closet, hot and cold running water, speaking tubes, and lifts. Second was that his reputation had preceded him. On the day he arrived, the New York Herald carried a banner headline, ‘Tchaikovsky is here!’, followed by an article about him. ‘It seems that in America I am better known than in Europe. There are pieces of mine which Moscow does not yet know that are played here several times a season.’ And third was the openness of Americans:

Compared with the impression made by Paris, where in every advance, every kindness from a stranger one senses an attempt to exploit, the plain dealing which you find here – the sincerity, generosity, cordiality without ulterior motive, the readiness to oblige and be nice – is striking and, at the same time, touching. This and American ways in general, their manners and customs, I find very sympathetic.

He met Walter Damrosch, the conductor whose advocacy had been primarily responsible for his invitation to America, and Andrew Carnegie, the émigré Scot who had made a fortune, much of which he had devoted to public and philanthropic causes, but who had remained very much his own modest, friendly self. American hospitality, Tchaikovsky found, could be prodigious. He was impressed by the formality of dinner parties, the dress codes, the importance of flowers, the courtesy and the food – except, it seems, when it was ‘native American’. (‘Unusually revolting,’ he wrote in the diary he kept during this American tour.) Guests might even be provided with personal carriages when both coming to and leaving a formal social event. ‘One must be fair to American hospitality: only amongst us could you meet something similar,’ he noted.

His role at the official opening of the Carnegie Hall was only a nominal one: to conduct his Coronation March. (‘Went excellently: a great success,’ he noted in his diary.) The press were mightily impressed by his conducting: ‘One of the few first-class composers who have also been great conductors,’ wrote one critic; ‘He conducts with the authoritative strength of a master, and the band obeys his lead as one man,’ enthused another. Tchaikovsky’s first full concert was on his birthday, 7 May:

Never, I think, have I been so afraid. Is it that they direct their attention to my exterior? However that may be, having endured several painful hours, I finally went out, again had an excellent reception, and produced, as they say in today’s papers, a sensation. After the Suite I sat in Reno’s office and gave an interview to some reporters (O these reporters!).

By now he desperately needed to be alone –

and so, squeezing my way through the crowd of ladies who were surrounding me in the corridor and staring at me with eyes in which I could not but with pleasure read enthusiastic interest, and declining the Reno family’s invitation, I rushed home.

His Third Suite, Tchaikovsky discovered, had enjoyed a special success: ‘A marvellous production. Russian music certainly threatens that of Germany,’ wrote one critic; ‘The sensation of the afternoon was Mr Tchaikovsky’s Third Suite – original, unique, and full of local colour,’ wrote another; ‘Heard yesterday as it was interpreted under the magnetic and magnificent conducting of the composer, it produced an overwhelmingly great effect,’ wrote a third. It was much the same at his next appearance, this time conducting some of his religious choral music. But his greatest triumph was his final concert, in which he conducted his First Piano Concerto with, as soloist, Adele aus der Ohe, a Liszt pupil who had now built up a formidable reputation in America:

The enthusiasm was such as I have never succeeded in arousing even in Russia. There were endless recalls, they cried ‘Upwards!’ [sic !], waved their handkerchiefs – in a word, it was clear that I am indeed loved by the Americans. I especially valued the orchestra’s delight in me.

His New York concerts were now over, and he was exhausted – yet still his waking hours were taken up by people wanting interviews, people who just wanted to meet him or wanted his autograph. One, an old man, brought along a libretto he had written in the hope that Tchaikovsky might use it. All seem to have been American, or at least living in America – that is, except one, a Russian lady journalist, with whom he could talk in Russian as to a Russian. A surge of longing for his homeland overwhelmed him. ‘Suddenly tears welled up, my voice began to tremble, and I could not hold back my sobs,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘I ran into the next room and didn’t emerge for a long while.’

The following day Carnegie gave a dinner in Tchaikovsky’s honour, at which his host displayed charmingly his reverence for his special guest. ‘During the whole evening he showed his affection for me in his own unusual way,’ Tchaikovsky wrote in his diary.

He seized my hands, crying that I was the uncrowned, though very real, king of music. He embraced me (not kissing me: here men never kiss each other), in expressing my greatness he stood on tiptoe and lifted his hands high in the air, and finally threw the whole company into raptures by showing how I conducted. He did this so seriously, so faithfully, so accurately, that I myself was delighted.

At eleven o’clock Reno, who had been his main guide through all these events, walked him back to his hotel.

There was now a break in Tchaikovsky’s conducting commitments, and pastoral care shifted to Ferdinand Mayer, a German who worked for the piano-making firm of Knabe, and who, with his associate, Wilhelm Reinhard, acted as one of Tchaikovsky’s minders. Tchaikovsky’s hosts had decided that he should make a journey to the Niagara Falls, and Mayer had made all the arrangements ahead for ensuring he was looked after and, where necessary, shepherded. It made the most welcome, interesting and relaxing of interludes; Tchaikovsky ‘did the Falls’ very thoroughly, emerging fortified for the days ahead when again he would be subjected to the so generous but so overwhelming hospitality of his New York hosts ahead of his other American engagements. The first of these was in Baltimore, where the orchestra would be the travelling Boston Festival Orchestra. Again Adele aus der Ohe played the First Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky’s other contribution being the Serenade for Strings. The hall was not full, but the press reaction was as enthusiastic as in New York. Washington came next with a soirée at the Russian Embassy, in which Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio was paired with a Piano Quartet by Brahms. It was the easiest engagement of the tour, for there was no language problem, and at three o’clock the next morning a very relaxed Tchaikovsky was returned to his hotel. A free day enabled him to visit the Washington Monument and the Capitol. His final appearance as conductor was in Philadelphia, again with the Boston Touring Orchestra and Adele aus der Ohe playing to a well-filled hall and to great enthusiasm. We do not know whether Tchaikovsky was gratified by press reviewers’ attempts to characterize his appearance (one noting that ‘he looks like a broker or clubman rather than an artist, seems to be rising sixty, but is well preserved’, another that he was ‘more like a prosperous merchant, or a United States Senator’), for he took the train straight back to New York.

Tchaikovsky’s conducting commitments were now all discharged, and there remained only a concert of his works at the Composers’ Club, the programme comprising the Piano Trio, Third String Quartet, and some of his songs. There were to be abundant farewells (sadly, he had to tell the elderly librettist that he would not be using his work), presents were heaped on him, and in the middle of the concert there was a speech addressed to him, to which he replied in French, receiving an ovation. Afterwards there were people to talk with, and autographs to sign. Then, with Reno, Mayer and Reinhard, Tchaikovsky returned to his hotel, packed, then shared two bottles of champagne with his companions. His final farewells were to the hotel staff.

Despite all the longings for home that had periodically punctuated his tour, the three-and-a-half weeks in America had been a personal triumph for Tchaikovsky – exciting, heartwarming, and the strongest evidence yet of just how universal and enthusiastic was the love of his music. He returned to Europe in a frame of mind very different from that in which he had set out – but then, as he had predicted on first arriving in New York, when it was all over he would recall it with pleasure. Disembarking at Cuxhaven, his journey home was completed by train from Hamburg, via Berlin. On 1 June he was back in St Petersburg.

Even while Tchaikovsky was in mid-Atlantic, the New York Herald took stock of his visit:

If we are to count up all the men and women of genius now adorning the world, how long would that list be? Should we be able to name the twelve or ten or six such people? Men whose claim to the high honor would not be disputed by even the most skeptical and cold? Let us try.

To head the list we should, of course, have Bismarck. Then might come Edison and Tolstoy, Sarah Bernhardt and perhaps Ibsen, with Herbert Spencer and two great composers – Dvŏrák and Tchaikovsky. The right of Tchaikovsky to a place on the roll will hardly, we think, be denied.

28

Double-Bill: A Relationship Renewed

Tchaikovsky’s mood on returning from America was ambivalent. The status his name had already gained in this distant land and the ecstatic ovations that he and his music had roused were the strongest evidence to date of his growing global reputation. Back in St Petersburg it was good to see again his family and friends, and enjoy the enhancement of his personal standing that his American triumph now brought. But his American hosts’ overestimate of his age continued to nag. ‘No! the old man is obviously in decline,’ he wrote to his nephew Bob a month after his return:

Not only is his hair thinning and white as snow, not only are his teeth falling out and declining to chew his food, not only are his eyes weakening and wearying easily, not only are his legs shuffling rather than walking – but even the one and only ability he has for any sort of occupation is failing and evaporating.

Even before his American tour the deforestation at Frolovskoye had so depressed him that he had instructed Alexey to move everything back to their former house in Maidanovo. Nor would there be any more trips to Tiflis which he had so come to love, for Anatoly had been promoted to a post in Estonia, and his only hope was that Ippolitov-Ivanov might invite him to conduct there. But such invitations elsewhere would proliferate. The Americans wanted him back, but the fee offered was paltry. Tchaikovsky countered with a demand three times higher – and that was that! But engagements nearer home were both practicable and profitable, as well as beneficial to his reputation – but they also absorbed time and energy. The directions taken by the Moscow Conservatoire and the local RMS had fostered an antipathy to both, and this had affected his personal relations with some former close associates: there would be no more house parties with them in Moscow. Business matters with Jurgen-son, including revised and corrected editions of some of Tchaikovsky’s earlier works, would increasingly demand his attention; moreover, he discovered that some of Jurgenson’s proof-readers had been very careless, and he had to take more and more of this laborious time-consuming chore on himself. Yet despite all this, his characteristic financial generosity, and his willingness to give of his own time to try to help others continued. Among these interventions was an instruction to Jurgenson to buy twenty tickets against Tchaikovsky’s account for a young pianist’s debut concert in Moscow, then distribute them among friends because Tchaikovsky feared the audience would be small. There was support, too, for Shpazhinskaya, who was near breaking point over her family situation, and even more time was devoted to healing a breach between Modest and Kolya Konradi. The latter had felt that Modest had treated his mother insultingly during the disputes of Kolya’s troubled childhood, nor did Kolya consider that he should still be paying Modest a salary. Tension had for a while been eased, but now it had resurged, and Tchaikovsky suggested Modest should break his more formal relationship with Kolya, and that the salary payment should end. It did, but at no financial loss to Modest, for the latter later admitted that he had ever since then been receiving 2000 roubles a year from brother Pyotr – significantly, exactly the the sum Kolya had been paying him. And acting in a completely different sphere, Tchaikovsky approached the head of the Moscow theatres on behalf of a singer who had created the title role in the Moscow premieres of Onegin and of Eletsky in the recent The Queen of Spades . Tchaikovsky’s letter tells us as much about its writer as about the grounds that prompted it:

Dear Pavel Mikhailovich,

The day before yesterday, when I was with you, I forgot to approach you with a further very important request. I had promised dear, sympathetic Khokhlov to petition you on his behalf: that when he performs the role of the Demon in Rubinstein’s opera for the hundredth time, you would permit this to be advertised on the posters. I totally understand this fervent wish of his, and I consider that he fully, fully merits those enthusiastic ovations which should be anticipated if the public are made aware of this jubilee, unprecedented on our stages. Please, I beg you most earnestly, respect Khokhlov ’s petition. He is a favourite with his colleagues, the public, the composers of operas, the Moscow ladies – in a word, he is a universal favourite, and you will afford great pleasure to all if you accede to this request.

 

Yours very truly,

P. TCHAIKOVSKY

Eleven days later Khokhlov received his deserved public tribute.

Inevitably composition became a victim of these inroads into Tchaikovsky’s time, and in his remaining two years only one work – though a stunning one – would come from him that could truly match the greatest of its predecessors. Meanwhile, his first priority on returning to Russia was to complete the double-bill of Iolanta and The Nutcracker . Tchaikovsky had read Henrik Hertz’s one-act play, King René’s Daughter , nine years earlier, been captivated by it, and promised himself he would one day set it to music. Modest had devised a libretto, but as yet Tchaikovsky had composed nothing, and Frolovskoye would become his base until the middle of September, when the sketches for the opera would be completed. By the year’s end the scoring was done and, with The Nutcracker , Iolanta received its premiere in December 1892. On this occasion it scored a success, but the press were generally very unfavourable (‘In it Tchaikovsky repeats himself …’; ‘This time unfortunately the composer’s melodic inspiration was far below its usual level …’; ‘Tiresomely long, the musical images of the characters are tediously sketched, and there are no new, fresh creative ideas in it’ – and so on). That Iolanta was paired with the perennially popular ballet, The Nutcracker , did not help its longer-term fortunes, for the double-bill involved two very different and star-studded casts, each of which in normal circumstances would have had its own orchestra, while the opera by itself would make a very short evening. Opportunities of seeing Iolanta are thus very rare.

Iolanta: opera in one act ***

[ Iolanta is an opera of much charm, but of uneven musical quality. The earlier stretches are attractive, and the love scene that follows contains some touching, sometimes very beautiful music. However, the later stages are less interesting musically .]

The story of Iolanta is set in fifteenth-century Provence. Iolanta, King René’s daughter, has been blind from birth, and is therefore unaware she is different from other people. Her attendants are never to mention light, and an outsider enters the garden on pain of death. Iolanta is betrothed to Robert, Duke of Burgundy, and René has kept her isolated, hoping to conceal her disability from him until she is cured. Ebn-Hakir, a great Moorish physician, examines Iolanta, but tells her father that she can be cured only if she longs to see the light: thus she must be told of her blindness. Robert and Vaudement, a Burgundian knight, arrive. In fact, Robert loves another, but Vaudement is captivated by Iolanta. When she is unable to tell red roses from white, he perceives the truth, and Iolanta becomes aware that she is not as others are. ‘What is light?’ she asks. ‘The Creator’s first gift,’ Vaudement replies. On returning, René is appalled, but Ebn-Hakir realizes that the condition for cure now exists – and René also sees how he can rouse Iolanta’s will to see, for Vaudement has entered the garden without permission, and so he must die, the King decrees – that is, if Iolanta is not cured. Iolanta readily goes off with Ebn-Hakir, and when she returns she can see. Robert has now admitted his affections lie elsewhere, and Vaudement is established as a suitable match for Iolanta. All rejoice.

Iolanta is a slight and uneven piece, though the love scene between Vaudemont and Iolanta contains music equal to Tchaikovsky’s best. The orchestral introduction, being scored only for wind instruments, provides a well-judged foil to the lovely music that opens the opera itself, muted strings and harp substantiating the gentle world in which Iolanta exists. (Older readers who know the ‘Minuet from Berenice ’ by Handel, once second only to that composer’s ‘Largo’ in popularity, may reasonably suspect that this was haunting Tchaikovsky when he composed the opera’s opening.) Iolanta’s arioso is a very touching piece, the women’s choruses have much charm, as does the lullaby to which they finally lull their charge to sleep. But musical interest dips in the acre of accompanied recitative that follows on the fanfares that signal a stretch of explanations and proceedings before the King and Ebn-Hakir enter, and the former sings a pain-filled, yet dignified aria. Even more impressive in its way is Ebn-Hakir’s response after he has seen Iolanta, for his aria circles round and round the same constricted phrase, as though unsparingly driving home to the King that Iolanta must be told of her blindness if she is to be cured. The entry and reactions of Robert and Vaudement are efficiently treated; the former’s revelation of his passion for Matilda is appropriately lusty, Vaudement’s that of a man who is still longingly awaiting the first true experience of love. ‘O come, bright vision,’ he sings, then opens the door leading from the terrace – and his wished-for vision lies sleeping before him.

This is the heart of the opera, and the quality of Tchaikovsky’s music in what follows is no surprise, for Iolanta is yet another of those young, vulnerable heroines who had so profitably preoccupied him in some of his earlier operas. Here Tchaikovsky became truly engaged with his subject, and the hesitant first exchanges between the lovers are sensitively presented, Vaudement’s declarations both passionate and tender, Iolanta’s responses engagingly ingenuous. But bewilderment is coupled with mounting curiosity at her unseen lover’s words and at his amorous tone that is so new to her: this, and her suitor’s impassioned outburst of pity as he discovers Iolanta’s blindness, then perceives what this costs her, are beautifully handled. If only Iolanta had maintained this level, it could have been a minor jewel in Tchaikovsky’s operatic treasury. But when the metaphysics intervene, a stiff tune rather like the motto theme of the Fifth Symphony signals a formal duet conclusion in prospect, and formula replaces vibrant creativity.

Sadly nothing in what follows matches the best of what has gone before. All is efficiently delivered, but mostly it is concerned with an expeditious despatch of the abundant unfinished business of the plot, culminating in a noisy finale on what is certainly not one of Tchaikovsky’s best tunes.

The Nutcracker: ballet in two acts *****

[ The Nutcracker is perhaps, of all Tchaikovsky’s larger pieces, the one that requires least comment from me. Assuming that the listener has well-banded CDs, there is no need for me to do more than help my reader to connect the stage action with the music and sharpen a little his/her awareness of interesting details. It is easy to criticize, even ridicule, aspects of the story, but Tchaikovsky’s music is so inventive,  varied, and superbly orchestrated that I still find simply listening to the whole piece at home an experience both relaxing and enriching.]

Though The Nutcracker is in only two acts, its macro-structure reflects that of The Sleeping Beauty in that it narrates a story, then appends a floor show. The difference is one of proportion, for whereas in the four-act Sleeping Beauty the story had occupied the first three acts, the divertimento being confined to the fourth, in the two-act Nutcracker the story is the business of Act 1 and only a morsel of Act 2, the divertissement annexing the remainder of that act. The plot is based on a short story by the early nineteenth-century German writer E. T. A. Hoffmann, adapted into two acts by the choreographer, Marius Petipa, in collaboration with Tchaikovsky.

Act 1: A hall in the Silberhaus’s house . The Christmas tree is being decorated, to the excitement of the Silberhaus’s children, Clara and Fritz, and their friends. Drosselmeyer, Clara’s godfather, enters and presents the children with four mechanical dolls which dance when wound up. For Clara and Fritz his special present is an odd-looking doll, a Nutcracker, which Fritz plays with, and breaks. Clara rescues it, rocks it, then lays it in her favourite doll’s bed. The guests dance the old Grossvatertanz (a traditional seventeenth-century German dance for concluding balls) to round off the party. Clara wants to take the doll to bed, but this is not allowed. The guests gradually disperse, and the hall becomes empty.

As soon as it is quiet, an anxious Clara returns to discover how the Nutcracker is, but is alarmed by what she sees and hears: twinkling lights from chinks, Drosselmeyer’s image on the clock face, and mice everywhere. She seeks refuge in the Nutcracker’s bed. In the moonlight the Christmas tree grows to intimidating proportions, and the toys come to life. Gingerbread soldiers appear, as does an army of mice. Battle is joined, and the mice win. Suddenly the Nutcracker jumps out of bed and orders the alarm to be sounded. Tin soldiers, armed with cannon, leap out of boxes, and the Mouse King orders his army to attack. Finally he challenges the Nutcracker to single combat. But Clara, seeing the increasing danger threatening the Nutcracker, hurls her shoe at the Mouse King’s back, and the Mouse King flees with his army. The Nutcracker turns into a handsome Prince, falls on his knees before Clara, and begs her to follow him. They disappear among the Christmas tree’s branches as the setting is transformed into a pine wood. The snow begins to fall and the corps de ballet performs a big snowflakes’ dance as the storm subsides and a winter landscape is illuminated by the moon.

Act 2: Confiturenburg: the Palace of Sweets . The Sugar Plum Fairy and Prince Coqueluche, who are awaiting Clara and the Nutcracker Prince, are standing in a sugar kiosk decorated with dolphins, from whose mouths gush sweet and refreshing drinks. Various fantastic fairies representing flowers and sweets appear and bow before them. The major-domo announces the approach of their two expected guests, who float in, sitting in a gilded nutshell. Little Moors in hummingbird-feather costumes help Clara disembark. She and the Nutcracker Prince are greeted by the Sugar Plum Fairy, Prince Coqueluche, and the sisters of the Nutcracker Prince, who explains how Clara had saved him. The Sugar Plum Fairy orders the festivities to begin. These consist of: Spanish dance (chocolate); Arabian dance (coffee); Chinese dance (tea); Russian dance (Trépak); Danse des mirlitons (sugar candies); Mother Gigogne and clowns; Valse des fleurs ; Pas de deux (Sugar Plum Fairy and Prince Coqueluche). Clara is in raptures, and a delighted Nutcracker Prince tells her of the fairy-tale wonders of the Kingdom of Sweets. Final waltz and Apotheosis.

In the neat compact overture (in sonata form, but without development) Tchaikovsky excludes both the lower strings and all the brass except two horns: this is to be no high-drama event, and the touch will be light. What is soon striking about the ballet itself is how swift and incident-packed it is when compared with Swan Lake and The Sleepi ng Beauty . Preparing the Christmas tree is Silberhaus’s and his wife’s business in the first number (note the strange music that comes as the tree is illumined – a harbinger of the magic world that will open up later in the act): the noisy music is the excited children bursting in – but when they see the tree, even they are spellbound. Silberhaus orders a march to be played, after which the children dance around and, to more formal-sounding music, the children’s parents enter, and then guests dressed as eighteenth-century dandies – until everyone is drawn up sharp by the sudden entrance of Drosselmeyer, his bizarre character and appearance very deftly caught in his quirky tune. Some of the children are at first frightened by him, but he takes charge and produces the first two presents, a big doll and a soldier: a momentary silence, and both dance. The children plead to stay up late (the string tune), and then Drosselmeyer’s other two dolls are produced and perform a furious Russian dance.

During the following waltz Silberhaus refuses to let the children play with their new toys and, to console them, Drosselmeyer produces from his pocket an odd-looking Nutcracker, and makes it dance (the graceful string tune) before Fritz breaks it. Clara takes it, puts it to bed, and soothes it with a lullaby. Fritz and his friends twice try to awaken it with a trumpet fanfare and, to counter this noise, Silberhaus invites his guests to dance the Grossvatertan z (what exactly the lively outburst that intersects this dignified music is I do not know: more noise from Fritz and Co.?). Clara’s lullaby resumes and fades as the guests leave, the children are sent to bed, and the stage empties.

The music that follows could not be more different from that of the party. Here all Tchaikovsky’s prodigious skill as an orchestrator is enlisted; in none of his works is the scoring more important to the effect the music produces than here. Especially striking is the use of wind instruments and harp. All becomes dark, spooky, unstable and unsafe; against a gently quivering muted string background are heard snatches of melody, harp washes, sometimes little chains of rapidly repeated notes, sudden brief eruptions. Midnight strikes as Clara enters this ever more unnerving world – then suddenly the Christmas tree begins to grow, and grow, and GROW – one of the most awesome passages Tchaikovsky ever wrote. It is basically so simple: a little stepwise phrase, in three stages ever more powerfully rising and ever more powerfully supported as, onstage, we see the majestic burgeoning of the Christmas tree. Then the lilliputian battle – a prodigious turmoil of drum rolls, bugle calls, fanfares, strident woodwind outbursts, galloping strings, rampant rabbits, hares, mice devouring gingerbread soldiers, the Nutcracker rallying the troops, and finally Clara hurling her slipper at the unsuspecting Mouse King, then ‘collapsing in a faint’. Finally the emergence of the humble Nutcracker as the Nutcracker Prince, and his developing relationship with Clara – beautifully handled with music that is kindred with that of the Christmas tree, and likewise spacious. The snowflakes’ waltz, complete with girls’ voices, provides a formal end to the act.

Some critics are dismissive of the music of Nutcracker as mere confectionery. But as we enter Act 2’s kingdom of sweets is that not exactly what it should be? The musical substance of the opening is almost simplistic; it is Tchaikovsky’s virtuoso skill in decoration and orchestration that provides the allure (note the upward-running scalic music that accompanies the repeat of the opening theme; does this not add immensely to its seductive charm, could what is needed here be bettered?). Clara and the Nutcracker Prince enter (presumably to the grandly repeated descending scale on the brass), Clara meets her escort’s sisters, and the Prince recounts how Clara had saved him (here a quotation from the battle music of Act 1). Flora is praised for her service, and all settle down to enjoy the entertainment in store.

First comes the Spanish Dance with its prominent role for the trumpet, its locale soon confirmed by the castanets. Then we are moved to the east, first for the hauntingly sultry Arabian Dance (founded on a Georgian cradle song provided by Ippolitov-Ivanov) scored for muted strings over a hypnotically rocking ostinato accompaniment (note the oboe, then bassoon countermelodies in its second half), then further eastwards still for the quaint Chinese Dance, its one-minute duration as tiny as the initial gap between shrill piccolo and popping bassoons is huge. Next on to Russia for an athletic Trépak, followed by the famed Danse des mirlitons (for older readers, the TV ‘fruit-and-nutcase’ commercial), with its prominent three-flute tune. Last among these shorter dances that for Mother Gigogne, whose children are supposed to jump out from under her skirt to the tunes of two French songs, ‘Giroflé-girofla’ and ‘Cadet Rouselle’, before the more substantial, corporate – and famous – Valse des Fleurs . Finally comes the great Pas de deux for the Sugar Plum Fairy and Prince Coqueluche, its main idea springing from that powerful downward scale heard in the act’s preliminaries. It is a splendid decorative piece, and the second of the two solo variations is the most famous piece in the whole ballet, the Dance of the Sugar- Plum Fairy (here it is longer than the familiar version heard in the Nutcracker Suite), with the most famous of solos for what, at the time, was the very newly invented celesta. The Pas de deux has a short brilliant coda, after which the Valse finale provides the backdrop for what remains of the plot, the final Apotheosis representing (to quote the official scenario) ‘a huge beehive with bees flying round it, vigilantly guarding their riches’. I have never seen a production that incorporated this.

Tchaikovsky’s remaining two years would be a record of public celebrity, concert tours and all the social pressures that are the inevitable consequence of fame: indeed, as noted earlier, when Tchaikovsky died, he was second only to Tolstoy in the esteem of the Russian people. But what remains so striking is that, to the end, his modesty and humanity remained unchanged. Never was he spoiled by his celebrity. His own record of two brief visits give us touching insights into his view of what really mattered to him: his continuing relationship with his family, and with those who had played some critical role in his life. What had once drawn him to Kamenka had now largely disappeared. Sasha was dead, Lev was absent, and the nephews and nieces were either dead or dispersed. Yet he could still return to their old home and gain pleasure from the residue of relatives remaining, many older than himself. On the Russian Christmas Eve (5 January 1892), as he was about to embark on a conducting tour that was intended to take in Warsaw, Hamburg, Amsterdam and The Hague, he arrived at Kamenka with a travelling companion, Boris, the son of the estate manager. ‘It was not without a painful feeling that I entered the courtyard, in the middle of which the empty, locked house produces a doleful impression,’ he wrote to Bob.

Sister [Tchaikovsky’s cousin, now eighty-four years old] met me and invited me to drink tea with her. During tea she said such strange and nonsensical things that Boris spluttered with laughter three times. It seems she has declined greatly and become much more confused than before. After changing I directed myself to the big house. Lev’s mother and elder sisters are, by contrast, much better, and more cheerful than they were in the summer. I visited Nikolay Vasilyevich [Lev’s elder brother], who again told me how in the summer he had stumbled over a basket when his daughter was sowing seed on the left and had pushed him into the bucket, as well as several other familiar tales to which I listened with great pleasure, for I love Nikolay terribly, and am happy when I see he is still the same. Then I hurried off to Sister , who simply cannot understand that in no way have I come here only to drink tea with her all day, and is endlessly surprised that I don’t confine myself to my own room and hers. Then there was dinner at the big house (lean and very tasty). The Yashvils [relatives of Lev], brother and sister, arrived, and after them, unexpectedly, my nephew, Mitya , very cheerful and much improved in appearance. Lev’s mother, the aunts and Nikolay Vasilyevich were literally in tears of pleasure at his unexpected arrival. At eleven-thirty I returned home with Mitya and went to bed. At six a creaking door awoke me, and from behind the wardrobe I heard Sister ’s sepulchral voice: ‘Darling, do you want tea? ’ I didn’t reply. She went off, muttering some nonsense. After that I went to sleep again. Today, after tea at Sister ’s, I walked, attended an endless Mass, sat at home and chatted with Mitya, who told me how cheerless and boring it was living where he did. I was dreadfully sorry for him. Then there was a sumptuous lunch at the big house, preceded by a little service. Today it’s the Christmas tree. Kolya Sandberg [Nikolay Vasilyevich’s grandson] is very busy with it. Tomorrow I leave.

But his frame of mind was very different when, four days later, he wrote to Bob from Warsaw:

You ask what my mood’s like. Bad! Again, as during last year’s tour, I am counting the days, hours and minutes to the end of my wanderings. It’s not that I am physically tired from the journey – in no way! But what wearies me is that with strange people I cannot be myself. As soon as I am not alone, but with new and strange people, then without perceiving it myself, I take on the part of a person who is amiable, mild, polite, and also apparently absolutely delighted in a new acquaintance, instinctively trying to charm them by all this, which for the most part I do successfully, but at the price of extreme strain, joined with an aversion to my own dissimulation and insincerity. I want to say to them: ‘Go to the devil, the lot of you!’, but I utter compliments, and sometimes am so carried away, even become so much the part, that it’s difficult to tell where the real ‘me’ is speaking and where the false one, the one that only ‘seems’. So, in a word, all this is a mask which, with incredible relief, I shed when I remain alone.

But then, abruptly, the tone changes:

You are constantly in my thoughts, for at every feeling of sadness, melancholy, at every clouding of the mental horizon – like a ray of light the thought occurs that you exist, and that I shall see you in the not so distant future. On my word of honour, I do not exaggerate. Incessantly, of its own accord, this ray of comfort breaks through: ‘Yes, it’s bad, but it’s nothing – Bob is still in this world!’

These, surely, sound less like the words of an uncle to his nephew than of a husband to his wife or mistress.

The second visit occurred a year later. The preceding March Tchaikovsky had received a letter from Fanny Dürbach, the beloved governess of his very early years, and whom he had not seen for nearly half a century. Fanny had finally returned to France to settle in Montbéliard, and a further European tour now made it possible for Tchaikovsky to visit her briefly. ‘Dear Pierre,’ her letter had begun:

Permit me to call you thus; otherwise, if I were not to address you as when you were my dear little pupil, it would seem to me as though I was not writing to you. This morning my sister came up to my room with your letter in her hand, saying, ‘Here’s something that will give you great joy!’ I confess I had given up hope of the pleasure of seeing your handwriting again. When my present pupils had insisted that I should write to you, I had said to them, ‘We shall see each other in heaven.’

Because you are in France nearly every year, come the more quickly so that I may yet see you and talk with you about all those things which you and I have loved. How much there is about which only you can tell me! I know life well enough to foresee that there will be much that is sad. We will unite our memories and regrets. You know how good your dear parents were to me, and how I loved you all, and I hope you will find it pleasant to chat about them with an old friend who has lived her life with such sweet memories.

How much I would like to know how life has unfolded for all of you! I have thought a lot about Nikolay, that tall, handsome boy, about your dear sister, Zina, about Ippolit and Lidiya. Do they, like you, still have memories of their old friend?

Come, we have so much to talk about. You will not find yourself unknown in our town. But if it is quiet you want, then we have here a hotel with a garden run by honest people. You will find it very good. In Russia it is possible to offer hospitality: everything is conducive to it. Here it is not so. We live very modestly in our own small house; we also have a garden and all that is necessary. All the same, I thank you heartily for the thought that it might be otherwise: again I thank you for your good letter and the photograph. The more I look at it, the more I recognize you.

Your last letter, which I hold as something very precious and which I have re-read many times, was written in 1856. You were then sixteen. You were telling me of your mother’s death.

But your father: was he also able to take pleasure in your successes? And your dear Sashenka: was she happy in her marriage? Tell me about your younger brothers – but, most of all, about yourself. Allow me to hope for a quick reply from you in expectation of our meeting.

I have written to you without constraint. When you come, your presence will remind me that I must no longer talk with you as with my dear boy of long time past. I shall address you with all those titles that fame has conferred on you. God bless you and give you happiness.

 

Your old governess and friend,

    FANNY DÜRBACH

Their meeting was an instant success, Tchaikovsky being astonished at how little Fanny had changed. ‘I had been very afraid there would be tears, scenes – but there was none of this,’ he wrote to Nikolay, who had also known Fanny well:

She received me with joy, tenderness and great simplicity, as though we hadn’t seen each other for a whole year. Immediately I understood why both our parents and all of us had loved her very much. Soon there began endless recollections of the past and a whole stream of all sorts of most interesting details about our childhood, about mother and all of us. Then she showed me our exercise books , and your and my letters – but what was most interesting of all, several wonderfully sweet letters from Mama. I cannot describe the delectable, magical feeling I experienced as I listened to these tales and read these letters and exercise books. The past in all its detail arose so clearly in my memory that it seemed I was breathing the air of our Votkinsk home, I was listening to the voice of Mama, Venichka, Khamit, Akulina, and so on. At times I was so carried back into that distant past that it became somehow awesome, but at the same time sweet – and all the while both of us were holding back the tears.

I sat with her from 3 to 8, and failed totally to notice how the time passed. I spent all the following day with her, except that she sent me off to the hotel to dine, saying frankly that her and her sister’s table was too wretched, and that it would embarrass her to feed me. I had to pay two visits with her to close friends and a relative who had long been interested in me. In the evening I exchanged kisses with Fanny and left, having promised to return sometime.

For Tchaikovsky this was one of the most moving encounters of his last years, for the world-famous composer and the unknown provincial governess had each been able joyfully to relive memories of four wonderful years so long gone. Yet for her there was one disappointment. ‘There is no one more convinced of your talent than I. I saw its emergence as the gift of a poet (which I would still have wished to see you become). But nevertheless I still bless God for your successes, and it seems to me He has sent down to you your reward. How many renowned people are not recognized in their lifetimes!’ They continued to exchange letters right to the end, and she tried to tempt him back to Montbéliard, where he could relax and they could again talk. But, sadly, her hoped-for meeting never materialized.

29

The Final Celebrity Years: Sixth Symphony

The two highly personal, intimate encounters recorded in the last chapter had neatly flanked a further event of highly personal significance to Tchaikovsky: the acquisition of the ideal home which would become the base for what remained of his life. None of his previous abodes had proved entirely satisfactory, but in May 1892 he bought and settled into a large comfortable house at nearby Klin. It seems he had for some time known and admired it, and it had the bonus of a more than adequate garden. Tchaikovsky would bequeath it not to Modest, but to Alexey – a clear sign of the personal relationship that had consolidated between these two so very different men over the years, and, together with Modest, this former servant would convert the house into a museum to Tchaikovsky’s memory, leaving it nevertheless as it was in its late master’s time.

The house at Klin became even more than its predecessors a haven to which Tchaikovsky could escape from professional pressures and the ever growing adoration (and that is not too strong a word) of his compatriots. The conducting tours at home and abroad proliferated, and the ovations grew ever more ecstatic and prolonged. To take just one instance: nothing could have been further removed from the gentleness and intimacy of his reunion with Fanny than the adulation he endured only three weeks later during his fortnight-long visit to Odessa, where he was to supervise rehearsals and be present at the opening performance of The Queen of Spades ; there were also five concerts in which he had to conduct, and attendance at a trail of receptions and social events mounted in his honour. The furore began with a delegation of friends and representatives of the local branch of the RMS meeting him at Odessa’s railway station, continued at his first opera rehearsal, where he was greeted with ceremony and boundless applause, then found this topped by his reception at the end of his first concert, in which the audience demanded that several pieces should be encored not once, but three times. As one Odessa newspaper reported:

At the concert’s end the whole audience rose from its seats, cries of gratitude rang out from different directions, the ladies waved their handkerchiefs, the gentlemen their hats, while from the platform the orchestra kept up a constant flourish. But this had seemed insufficient for the bemused members of the orchestra; recognizing what a great talent was among them, in the interval they had, one after the other, kissed his hands. This was not done on enthusiastic impulse, but deliberately and reverentially. Pyotr Ilich grasped the total sincerity of their greeting, and thanked the players.

On such visits Tchaikovsky had become prepared for much soliciting of his attention from individuals. Such demands could be very wearing, but on this visit there was one that would give him great pleasure: the Ukrainian artist, Nikolay Kuznetsov, begged to be allowed to paint his portrait. Tchaikovsky agreed, and before he left Odessa the canvas was completed. Kuznetsov’s proved to be the only from-life portrait of Tchaikovsky ever painted, and Tchaikovsky himself was delighted with it, Modest confirming that it had caught the ‘tragic side’ of his brother remarkably well. It now hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

Tchaikovsky was, of course, deeply moved by such genuine and spontaneous tributes paid to him by the inhabitants of Odessa, but there was a downside to all this – and a touch of bitterness, as he confessed to Modest:

Never have I been forced to weary myself with conducting as in Odessa – but then, never at any time or anywhere have I been so exalted or fêted as there. If only sometime I might receive in our capitals just a tenth of what has happened in Odessa. But that’s impossible – or, rather, it’s unnecessary. What I need is to believe in myself again – for my faith has been undermined; it seems to me my role is over.

Yet, extraordinarily, within twelve days of writing this, he would complete the sketches of one of his greatest first movements.

However, Tchaikovsky had, perhaps, some real cause for self-doubt when he surveyed his most recent compositions, above all a grand symphony in E flat that he had projected in 1889, but which he had begun to sketch only in 1891 during the voyage back home from his American tour. A little later he roughed out a programme for the piece:

The ultimate essence of the symphony is Life . First movement – all impulsive passion, confidence, thirst for activity. Must be short (the finale Death – result of collapse). Second movement love: third disappointments: fourth ends dying away (also short).

Nevertheless, it was May 1892 before he began serious composition, and the symphony was completed in November. Yet returning to the piece after a break, he judged it to have been ‘composed simply for the sake of composing something’, and discarded it. 1 But then, in July 1893, he returned to the piece, converting the first movement into a single-movement concert piece for piano and orchestra, and in October, only weeks before his death, redrafting the symphony’s second and fourth movements to provide the basis for a full three-movement concerto. Unlike the first movement, however, these remained in sketch form after Tchaikovsky’s death, and Taneyev would complete and score them. This full version is now never performed, but the completed first movement is given the occasional airing.

Piano Concerto No. 3 in E flat (one movement) ***

[Though certainly not one of Tchaikovsky’s finest, this lonely movement makes agreeable listening for those with a penchant for concertos.]

That this movement was not conceived as a concerto is betrayed by the piano writing, which is lacking in Tchaikovsky’s characteristic boldness; it is sometimes pretty skeletal, sounding all too clearly as though it has been incorporated into the music rather than having participated in its creation. The movement’s structure is readily grasped. As in Tchaikovsky’s previous two piano concertos, there are three subjects, the first lively, the second more lyrical, and the third like a vigorous folk dance. The development opens with piano and orchestra collaborating, but then the forces are segregated, the orchestra having a lengthy stretch to itself (the second part of this is particularly appealing), the piano completing the development with a cadenza. The recapitulation’s structure is regular, and there is the expected vigorous coda.

On 9 February when, after his triumph in Odessa, Tchaikovsky had written so gloomily to Modest about his creative self-doubts, he had set out for a five-day visit to Kamenka, and then returned to Klin. In fact, his inner creativity had already been active, even seething, and it is clear that he had been revisiting the programme he had mapped out for the now rejected E flat symphony. So strongly were his creative powers working that he had already gestated a great deal of the new symphony in his head, and on the day after his return to Klin, he began setting it down on paper. Writing to Bob only a week later, he could report remarkable progress:

The work went so fast and furious that I had the first movement completely ready in less than four days, and the remaining movements are already clearly outlined in my head. Half the third movement is already done. There will be much formal innovation in this symphony – and, incidentally, the finale will not be a noisy Allegro but, on the contrary, a most long-drawn-out Adagio . You cannot imagine what bliss I feel, being convinced that my time is not yet passed, and that I can still work. Perhaps, of course, I’m mistaken – but I don’t think so.

Tchaikovsky frankly admitted that he was composing to a programme, but one ‘that would remain a mystery to all. It is completely subjective, and not infrequently during my journey, as I was composing it in my head, I wept copiously.’ For the moment he wished no one to know that he was working on the symphony.

Composition was now interrupted by a visit to Moscow to conduct at an RMS concert. It was the first time in three years that he had directed one of the Society’s concerts, for there had been serious disagreements with Safonov, the Conservatoire’s Director (no doubt one of the main causes for the bitterness he had alluded to in his letter to Modest). But now Safonov had sought a reconciliation, and Tchaikovsky’s concert was the predictable success: a welcoming flourish from the orchestra, rapturous applause from the audience, and encores galore. Back in Klin in early March, Tchaikovsky completed the new symphony’s third movement in a few days, but progress was further interrrupted by family visits and yet more concert engagements. This time Tchaikovsky’s first destination was St Petersburg, where he learned that Lev, Sasha’s widower, had married a woman thirty years younger than himself. The news had divided the family, and Tchaikovsky’s cousin, Anna Merkling, had been especially upset. Once again, even in the middle of such compositional preoccupations and exhausting professional engagements, Tchaikovsky could find time to set out what he saw as the positive consequence of Lev’s action, and so soothe Anna’s feelings:

Ah, Anna, with our years we ought not to be so emphatic in saying yes and no. Remember how we were all angry when my father married Lizaveta Mikhailovna. And so what? Nothing except unqualified happiness came from this late and, it seemed to us, unsuitable match. For a moment I found it distasteful to learn that Lev was marrying but, reflecting on his situation, not for one moment did I nourish any anger towards him, or wish to cast a stone.

If Tchaikovsky’s own feelings remained ambivalent at this stage, he would find reassurance in the way the marriage would evolve in the coming months.

After two further concerts in Moscow, Tchaikovsky moved on to Kiev. Yet again his overwhelming popularity in the Russian provinces was confirmed – a delegation to meet him, a musical greeting and applause from the orchestra at the rehearsal, furious clapping from the audience, and another orchestral fanfare (threefold this time) and audience ovation when he attended a performance of Verdi’s Rigoletto at the opera house, a choral–orchestral greeting before his own concert, an address of welcome, an abundance of wreaths and flowers, deafening applause, countless recalls at the concert’s end, and finally a triumphal exit from the hall in a chair borne aloft by local youths, all followed by a banquet with countless toasts. The next day, 28 March, there was a musical matinee in his honour. But on 31 March he was back in Klin: five more days, and on the final page of his new symphony he could inscribe: ‘O Lord, I thank thee! Today I have completed the sketches in their entirety.’ This task accomplished, he set the symphony aside, returning to it in August to score it. As with some of his other more recent works, this took longer than expected. But, as he observed to Anatoly, ‘It’s not the consequence of failing strength or old age, but that I’ve become infinitely stricter with myself, and I no longer have my former self-assurance. I’m very proud of the symphony, and I think it’s the best of my works.’ He knew it could prove a challenge to even his strongest supporters, ‘but I definitely consider it the best and, in particular, the most sincere of all my works. I love it as I have never loved any other of my musical offspring’.

On 21 October there was a private trial of the symphony, using staff and students from the Moscow Conservatoire. Clearly some of the players remained puzzled by it, and at the premiere the audience response was merely polite, while the press in general rated the symphony lower than its predecessors. Yet Tchaikovsky was sanguine about this. ‘It’s not that it displeased, but it produced some bewilderment,’ he wrote to Jurgenson two days later. ‘As far as I myself am concerned, I take more pride in it than in any other of my works.’ It had been billed simply as ‘Sixth Symphony: B minor’, and Modest claimed credit for its final title. After the performance the brothers had discussed, but without success, what this should be. ‘I left the room with Pyotr Ilich still undecided,’ Modest recalled. ‘Then suddenly the title Pathétique came into my head. I returned, and I remember as though it was yesterday pronouncing the word while standing in the doorway. “Capital, Modest, bravo, Pathétique !” – and in my presence he inscribed on the score the name that has remained ever since.’

Symphony No. 6 in B minor: Pathétique *****

[Earlier in this book I observed that, for me, Tchaikovsky composed three supreme masterpieces. Two I have identified: the opera Eugene Onegin and the ballet The Sleeping Beauty. The third is this B minor Symphony, his Sixth, the Pathétique. The originality and power of the piece are prodigious; it is also one of Tchaikovsky’s most consistent and perfectly composed. But it is no wonder that some in its first audience were evidently bewildered by it, for the total experience it presents is unique, and some passages may still provide something of a challenge. But its totality is overwhelming.]

It must seem strange that when a human being is enjoying public adulation as overwhelming and sincere as that which Tchaikovsky was now customarily receiving, he should produce his most tragic and, in the end, most pessimistic work. But Tchaikovsky would have found nothing strange in this; as he himself had, years before, frankly observed to his secret patroness: ‘In a happy situation I can produce a piece that is imbued with the most gloomy and hopeless feelings.’ Nor should we forget that the seed of what would become the Pathétique had been sown during his voyage home from his American tour some two years earlier, though clearly at that time his creativity was not yet ready to conceive and deliver that particular piece. What is perhaps significant is the sense of apparent creative decline ahead of the event, audible in the E flat Symphony, part of which became the unfinished Third Piano Concerto. Was something far greater germinating all the while within his creative faculty, a concept so novel that it could not be rushed but which, once it was fully formed, could scarcely be contained? Certainly the speed and the assurance with which the Sixth Symphony, as near a perfect masterpiece as music can offer, came into the world is itself prodigious, and the result is surely not only Tchaikovsky’s ultimate masterpiece, but one of the half-dozen greatest symphonies composed since the death of Beethoven.

Yet no symphony opens more unobtrusively. It begins inaudibly in Stygian gloom (this very slow introduction was, in fact, added by Tchaikovsky after the rest of the movement had been composed). But with the entry into the Allegro con moto exposition, the bassoon’s weary four-note figure is transformed by the strings to launch the first subject, the music gathers strength, and we enter a bright, even vivacious world; probably, indeed, in no earlier symphony had such a radical transformation of mood occurred as swiftly as here. The music seems confidently to gain more power, reaches a climax, then starts to fade, finally reducing to a single violin line which rises slowly aloft, fades yet further, and finally expires. There is a silence, and then the string line resumes, but retracing its steps downwards. Will Tchaikovsky now move on towards the second subject? No – because this is it – this is the second subject itself which unfolds as a slow elegiac theme that twice, it seems, seeks to lift itself out of its pervasive weariness, but which is fated (I use the word deliberately) to sink back ineffectually both times.

Already this movement has revealed just how different it will be from Tchaikovsky’s earlier symphonic first movements. However, as in most of his preceding sonata expositions, there are to be three themes here, and the third (that is, the second part of the second subject) opens as a dialogue between flute and bassoon on a livelier phrase, spreading itself at some length before yielding to a return of the preceding elegiac theme. This is now louder and stronger, yet still seems unable to shed its sombre mood, and it is followed by a long-dying coda leading to a yet slower and quieter restatement by the clarinet of this same melody. The first subject had ended by fading to nothing; so now will the second subject, but drawing out even more its ever quieter descent, fading to pppppp , the most extreme dynamic instruction Tchaikovsky ever prescribed, the last note marked to be long held. The exposition – even, it might seem, the movement itself – has petered out, has drained away. This, of course, is not so, though Tchaikovsky has, in terms of real time, already reached the movement’s halfway point – yet the development, recapitulation and coda are all still to come.

This prolongation of the second subject and of the exposition’s long-dying end has been very deliberately schemed, for the contrast between what we have just heard and what will follow is to be the most savage in all Tchaikovsky’s music, and the urgency such that the development, recapitulation and coda will be compacted, but without loss of weight, to balance in length what we have already heard. Clearly to achieve this compression, the strategy must change, and nothing alerts (I use the word deliberately) us more clearly to this almost brutal transformation than the chord that opens the development (I have seen unprepared audience members almost jump out of their skins at this). The shift of mood is as violent and sustained as could be; ‘scorching’ is perhaps an appropriate adjective to describe what immediately follows. The first subject, now not shy as at the exposition’s opening, but fierce and self-assertive, sets the new mood. Earlier in this movement the proportion of downward scales had surely hinted at the presence of Fate: now a strident descending scale on trumpets indicates unequivocally both the presence and the power of this implacable force. Tchaikovsky’s immediate answer is personal and explicit: the turmoil abates, and trombones and tuba enunciate the Orthodox Requiem’s traditional chant setting the words ‘With thy saints, O Christ, give peace to the soul of thy servant’: if there ever was any doubt that this symphony ‘is about something’, this surely disposes of that. Nevertheless, the respite is brief; once again the music grows in dynamic power, but this time less drastically, then subsides in preparation for the recapitulation.

Tchaikovsky is now about to build his most powerful climax ever, and to enhance its impact he first introduces a moment of relative calm, then moves towards a fierce recapitulation of the first subject. But this is merely the first stage in a far grander scheme. Dwelling at some length on this subject, Tchaikovsky proceeds to heighten even more the sense of high drama until the subject is unceremoniously swept aside by the descending Fate scale on trumpets and lower brass. The cataclysmic climax of the movement is at hand: from this low-pitched beginning, the music heaves itself almost wearily aloft to permit a gigantic, slow scalic descent through two octaves with majestic interpolations from the brass. Finally a further crescendo to a ffff chord from all the lower wind and brass, then a ff chord that quickly dies to pp – finally to nothing. I doubt there is, in all music, a silence more eloquent than this.

The distinguished early twentieth-century writer on music, Sir Donald Tovey, described this passage as ‘undoubtedly the climax of Tchaikovsky’s artistic career, as well as of his work’. I would not dispute this; it is truly awesome. The recapitulation of the first subject having already taken place, it is the elegiac second subject that enters after the pause. As for the third theme, there is simply no place here for its relatively relaxed persona, and it is in a mood of resignation that the symphony’s opening idea is converted into a solemn, measured theme beneath which Fate stalks on pizzicato strings.

We cannot, of course, know what went on in Tchaikovsky’s mind after completing this stupendous movement, but even he must have been aware of the challenge it posed to produce something very contrasted, yet not inappropriately lightweight. In the Fifth Symphony the great slow movement had been one of his weightiest, laden with human emotion, yet it was not tragic, and the explicit and elegant Valse that had followed had worked perfectly. But something as relaxed as that was unthinkable here. Yet, in its way, Tchaikovsky’s solution is also a ‘Valse’, but this time different. Try to dance to this one, and you are in trouble because it is not, in fact, a waltz. Instead of three beats to a bar, it has five, which feels like 2+3. Perhaps it could be described as a ‘limping waltz’; whatever the case, this change of metre is sufficient to give it a less fluent flow. Yet this ‘impairment’ in itself would not have been enough. The form of Tchaikovsky’s second movement is essentially that of the classical minuet and trio as composed by Tchaikovsky’s idol, Mozart, in his own symphonies – that is, identical flanks with a central trio, both components being cast in binary form. But whereas Mozart’s trios were habitually more laid back than the identical flanking sections, Tchaikovsky’s brings with it a pathos generated by the persistent dissonance in every third-beat chord, as well as the nagging drum/double-bass throbbing that underlies the whole section. Yet the movement does have one un-Mozartian feature – a coda that follows seamlessly, incorporating echoes from the central trio section, alternating in its final bars with the first bar of the movement’s first theme.

Even more is the third movement a surprise. We might have expected a slow movement, but this one is the very opposite – a consistently bustling Allegro molto vivace that is a tour de force of musical inventiveness and sustained energy, yet which ends in being something far more portentous, even critical, than might ever have been expected after such an unclouded beginning. Because of its unbroken consistency of style and absence of easily recognizable ‘punctuation points’, there is no way in which I can identify for my reader the separate sections that make up the form, but I am not sure that doing this would really be helpful in this instance. What is important here is not the structural coherence (though it is as carefully schemed as any movement by Tchaikovsky), but the fact that the piece begins as a kind of lively moto perpetuo that seeks to project a state of untroubled being, but which, through its very length and, towards its end, its very vehemence, only confirms that the search is futile. It is a truth devastatingly declared in the very first sounds of the following movement, which is not a conventional vigorous finale, but a most pain-filled, tragic utterance – a disconcerting return to the mood of the first movement, but this time with an ending that suggests not resignation, but only oblivion.

Let’s look more closely at this extraordinary finale. But a moment of caution before we begin. This is the last piece which I shall be examining not only here but anywhere, for this will certainly be my last book. Writing about music presents many challenges, and poses many questions. Some would say that you simply cannot define the substance of music in words, that any description of what a piece of music ‘is about’ is simply a fiction, a subjective indulgence that may tell the reader much about the author, but little about the music itself: at best it is allowed to be misguided, though well intentioned. As someone who has spent the last fifty-plus years in trying to attune my listeners/readers to a musical experience by the use of metaphor (for that is really what I am doing, with all my adjectives and descriptive phrases), at least I can plead good intentions, and if by so doing I have, at least from time to time, said or written something that has helped at least some readers to apprehend a little more clearly something of the profound and precious experience that another human being of true genius has embodied in a complex of sounds, then I am unapologetic.

So let me take my own ‘ego trip’ (as some would say) through this great, and stunningly original, finale. It has two principal thematic elements, the first opening unsparingly with a brief, then repeated, pain-filled phrase as the point of departure to an increasingly sustained and ever louder, dissonance-filled paragraph, which finally sinks into silence. The movement’s opening is repeated, but this time there is no crescendo, for the whole passage is underpinned by the bassoons who, starting on a high note, and at first very slowly, but then with increasing pace, trace a stepwise descending line which finally monopolizes the section, drawing the music ever downwards until, again, it fades into the depths. All this, I would suggest, is the active side of grief, the shock and despair. Again a silence (how important in musical experience can be those moments when nothi ng is heard) – but now it is the movement’s second theme that enters, this time a sustained one of great breadth. If the first music had embodied a more outward reaction to adversity, this surely reflects the inner (and deeper?) apprehension of it. This music is seemingly poised and controlled, no longer manifesting the pang of an initial shock but, instead, the ache that lingers and lingers, caught into music which (like the second (string) theme of the first movement) ruminates on the same phrase, then rises as inner tension grows, only to fall back – but then rises again, this time to resume more powerfully at a higher level; then, as though the self-control has finally broken, it collapses almost convulsively into an abrupt silence, to be followed by a series of terse, separated phrases, which lead back to the shock and despair music with which the movement had opened (a sentence that, I think, is about as broad as the passage on which it is a commentary). This is how the first half of this movement sounds to me. And if my reader accepts that my extrapolation thus far is plausible, I think he or she should be left to extrapolate further for him-or herself. And does it matter if we should differ? No, of course not. It is the experience, as each of us individually hears it, that matters. And do we need the programme (even Tchaikovsky’s programme?) to enjoy this musically? I think not. Only functional music dutifully written to a set scenario (most film music, for instance) requires such knowledge. Tchaikovsky was no doubt conditioned by his own programme in composing the Pathé tique , but the symphony that resulted can still have a tremendous impact on the innocent listener simply because, whatever the extramusical prompt of the moment, Tchaikovsky was still devising it above all as a devastating but coherent listening experience.

Let me finally draw attention to one tiny detail near the symphony’s end. The final bars are founded on what I have called the music of inner apprehension, though now there is no element of agitation, merely a measured descent and a final fading into utter silence (though, I suppose a philosopher might query whether this symphony is still going on even now – except that we cannot hear it). But just before this section begins there are four very quiet and separate chords that lead into the chord from which the fast-fading end begins. The structure these chords create is one of the clichés of Western classical music, used millions upon millions of times, especially by eighteenth-and nineteenth-century composers, to establish the end not only of a whole piece but perhaps also of subsections and even single phrases within that piece. When we hear them in such contexts, we barely notice them (if at all), and certainly hear no particular significance in them. But here, after the tensions and turmoil of this great finale, the promise of imminent finality they bring can be almost chilling. The tragedy happened, the grief remains, but the tale itself is done, and all ends in oblivion.

And how shall I round off this, the last of my investigations of Tchaikovsky’s music? I hope I may be excused for repeating my own words at this same juncture in my four-volume life-and-works of Tchaikovsky:

Thus ends the greatest of Tchaikovsky’s instrumental works, and surely the most truly original symphony to have been composed since Beethoven’s Ninth. In the Fifth Symphony Tchaikovsky had sought to prove he could submit to the Western view of the symphony, yet remain wholly himself. But in the Sixth there had been no compromise; the method, the form, the ethos were as personal as the musical invention and the expressive experience that shaped its structure. Had he lived, it is impossible to imagine any direction he could have taken beyond this. But the matter never arose. Within nine days of conducting its premiere he was dead.

1 In the 1950s the Soviet scholar, Semyon Bogatïrev, recomposed and scored a hypothetical version of the E flat Symphony (‘No. 7’, as he described it), drawing on and scoring various of Tchaikovsky’s materials.

30

Cambridge Honour: The Final Mystery

During Tchaikovsky’s last months the general pattern of his life continued as before. But one event stands out supremely – and one that is of particular interest to British readers. Tchaikovsky had already received high honours from learned societies in other European cities and countries – from Prague, France and Holland: now in June he was to receive an honorary degree from Cambridge University. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the Cambridge University Musical Society (‘CUMS’, as it is colloquially called), and there was a proposal that honorary degrees should be conferred upon certain eminent composers. Brahms and Verdi were the two initial choices, but neither was prepared to attend the ceremony, and a remarkable group of alternative graduands was quickly mustered: not only Tchaikovsky, but also Grieg, Saint-Saëns, Bruch and Boito (also a composer, though best known for his libretti for Verdi’s final two operas, Otello and Falstaff ).

Tchaikovsky promptly decided this could be the moment to conduct another concert for the Philharmonic Society in London, and one was arranged for 1 June. He arrived in London two days earlier, having till the last moment contemplated withdrawal, but finally installing himself once again in the Hôtel Dieudonné in Ryder Street. He was still in a bad mood, berating London, and lamenting, among other things, its lack of pissoirs . He was to share the concert with Saint-Saëns, and it was not an easy pairing for Tchaikovsky. Saint-Saëns was already very popular in England, and he would also appear as soloist in his own Second Piano Concerto, while Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony was unknown in London, and its success by no means guaranteed. Before the first rehearsal Tchaikovsky was introduced to the Scottish composer, Alexander Mackenzie, who was to conduct the other items in the programme, and who seems to have shepherded him through the rehearsals, taking him off to his own home to rest after the second. Both rehearsals were rather nervous occasions, though (according to the young Henry Wood, who was present) Tchaikovsky finally drew the required spirit from his players by exclaiming, ‘Vodka – more vodka!’

He need not have worried. ‘The concert went brilliantly,’ he could write to Bob, ‘that is, I enjoyed a real triumph, so that Saint-Saëns, who appeared after me, suffered somewhat.’ Indeed, the capacity audience had applauded all four movements of the symphony, and at the end had given him an ovation. Among the audience was the young Bernard Shaw, at this time still working as a music critic, and who remarked on the high standard of the playing under both composers.

The Cambridge event being still eleven days ahead, a string of social engagements filled the gap. The following day the two composers were entertained to dinner at the St Stephen’s Club in Westminster, the event ending at 11.30 p.m., after which Mackenzie and Tchaikovsky wandered the London streets until one o’clock in the morning, discussing music. Over the next days there would be a host of appointments. What Tchaikovsky himself may have thought of this continuous limelight we may easily guess, but there is no doubt that he endured it successfully, endearing himself to the many who had contact with him. Francesco Berger, Secretary of the Philharmonic Society, and the man who had been largely responsible for Tchaikovsky’s first professional visit to England five years earlier, was one who entertained him. Tchaikovsky had insisted that the event should be informal (‘no party and no evening dress’) and intimate. ‘Accordingly there were only four of us,’ Berger recorded. ‘His conversation, carried on in French and German, was easy without being brilliant, and in all he said there was apparent the modest, gentle spirit which was so characteristic of the man.’ But George Henschel, the singer, composer and conductor, who had first encountered Tchaikovsky eighteen years earlier in Russia, saw the other side of him – that he was –

even more inclined to intervals of melancholy than when I had last met him. Indeed, one afternoon, during a talk about the olden days in Petrograd [St Petersburg] and Moscow, and the many friends there who were no more, he suddenly got very depressed and, wondering what this world with all its life and strife was made for, expressed his own readiness at any moment to quit it.

Nevertheless, Henschel’s nine-year-old daughter, Helen, 1 uncovered a rather different aspect of him:

The melancholy was naturally not evident to me as a small child, but the gentleness and kindness were. One of my life’s minor tragedies is that he wrote me a long letter when he left London, that the wind blew it off the table into the waste-paper basket, and that the housemaid lit my fire with it.

As for Mackenzie, despite having met Tchaikovsky only on this visit, he seems to have summarized well what so many others would come to feel about him: ‘His unaffected modesty, kindly manner, and real gratitude for any trifling service rendered, all contributed to the favourable impression made by a lovable man.’

In Cambridge there would be a concert in which the honorary graduands would each conduct one of his own works. Tchaikovsky had selected Francesca da Rimini , and a first rehearsal was arranged at the Royal College of Music in London on 9 June. That evening, Charles Villiers Stanford, Professor of Music at Cambridge, and who was about to retire as conductor of CUMS after twenty-one years’ service, gave a soirée that included performances of English madrigals and part-songs by an amateur choir, the Magpie Minstrels.

Two days before leaving London, Tchaikovsky summarized for Modest his feelings about the past week and what would face him in Cambridge:

It’s the devil of a life! There’s not one pleasant minute – only eternal anxiety, melancholy, fear, fatigue, aversion, and so on. But now the end’s already close. On the other hand, in all fairness I must say there are a lot of nice people, and I’ve been shown much kindness of all sorts. All the future doctors have arrived except Grieg, who is ill. Among them, besides Saint-Saëns, I find Boito a sympathetic individual. But to make up for it Bruch’s a loathesome, haughty figure. The morning of the day after tomorrow I travel to Cambridge, and I shan’t be staying in a hotel but in a flat assigned to me at a Doctor Maitland’s [Downey Professor of Law, and a great enthusiast for music] from whom I have had a most kind letter of invitation. In all I shall spend one night there. On the day of my arrival there’s a concert and a banquet, and the ceremony on the following day. In four hours it’ll all be over.

At the concert in Cambridge’s Guildhall Tchaikovsky’s conducting of Francesca da Rimini scored a great audience success. Later Saint-Saëns would write generously of the piece, and of Tchaikovsky himself:

Bristling with difficulties, Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini , which lacks neither pungent flavours nor fireworks, shrinks from no violence. In it the gentlest and most kindly of men has unleashed a fearful tempest, and has had no more pity for his performers and listeners than Satan for the damned. But such was the composer’s talent and supreme skill that one takes pleasure in this damnation and torture.

A short visit to Trinity College followed, then the CUMS dinner at King’s College, at which Tchaikovsky found himself sitting beside Walter Damrosch, who was on holiday in England from the USA. Next came a conversazione at the Fitzwilliam Museum, at which a presentation was made to Stanford on his retirement from CUMS. The degree congregation would be at noon the next day.

Tchaikovsky summarized this occasion for Nápravník’s son, Vladimir:

At 11.30 we gathered at the appointed place and put on our doctoral robes, which consist of a white gown (silk) faced with crimson velvet, and a black velvet beret. Four doctors of law were admitted to their degrees along with us, one of whom was an Indian ruler (a raja) who wore a turban adorned with precious stones with a value of several million roubles, and one a field marshal. All the professors and doctors of the university in robes like ours, but of a different colour, collected in the same hall. At noon the procession set out on foot. I walked beside Boito and behind Saint-Saëns. Watched by a lot of people, we crossed a big courtyard to the university’s Senate House, which was filled to overflowing. Each of us sat in an allotted place on a high platform, the public orator (that’s what they call the gentleman whose special job is to make the speeches at these ceremonies) entered, and delivered a speech in Latin about each of us in turn, which was a eulogy of our services to science and art. During the speech the one in whose honour it was being delivered stood motionless at the front. While this was going on, according to medieval tradition the students who filled the rows whistled, hooted, sang, cried, and to all this you must pay no attention. After the speech the orator leads the doctor by the hand and describes a semicircle with him towards the chancellor, who is sitting in his special place. He takes the doctor by the hand and says in Latin: ‘In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit I declare you to be a doctor.’ There’s a firm handshake, after which you are led off to your place. When this was over the procession returned to the first hall in the same order, and a half-hour later everyone, in his own clothes, set off for an official lunch, at the end of which an ancient loving-cup was passed round among the guests. Afterwards there’s a reception at the Chancellor’s wife’s, and with this it’s all over.

Tchaikovsky admitted that the new doctors of music were overshadowed by the other graduands. The ‘field marshal’ was Lord (later Earl) Roberts of Kandahar, currently commander-in-chief in India, who was rapturously received and treated to a rendering of ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow!’ At the Raja’s installation the Christian references were discreetly omitted. Commenting on the occasion, the Pall Mall Gazette noted that the students’ performance exhibited ‘more vigour than musical ability’, and observed of the composers’ reactions that Saint-Saëns twisted his fingers, while Tchaikovsky ‘sank into ineffable meditations’. During the latter’s presentation, one wit provoked roars of laughter by shouting ‘Good old Shakemoffski!’

After the Chancellor’s luncheon and his wife’s garden party, Tchaikovsky set off for London, where he was to return the hospitality of various of his London friends with a meal at the Dieudonné. Next day he was in Paris. For all his earlier laments about the trials of his English sortie, he found much he could recall with pleasure. The Cambridge interlude he had truly enjoyed. His stay at the Maitlands’ ‘would have been terribly uncomfortable if he, and especially his wife, had not turned out to be the most charmingly sympathetic of people I’ve ever met – and moreover, Russophiles, which is a great rarity in England,’ he wrote to Kolya Konradi. ‘Now it’s all over I find it pleasant to recall my success in England and the unusual cordiality with which I was received everywhere.’ Being in no special hurry to be home, it was the end of June before he was, at last, back in Russia.

We may pass over specific events of the next three months. There were the usual business matters to attend to, concerts to conduct, concerts to arrange for the next season, trips to visit members of his now more widely dispersed family (and sometimes to give help in easing domestic problems and tensions), and visits to (and by) friends. Sadly several of the latter had recently died, and others were in a terminal condition. The Shilovsky brothers departed this life within a month of each other – Konstantin, who had contributed to the libretto of Onegin , dying while Tchaikovsky was still in Cambridge, and Vladimir, who had once been very close to Tchaikovsky, within days of the latter’s return to Russia – though, hearing back in February that his friend was mortally ill, Tchaikovsky had made a point of visiting and spending more time with him. Still more distressing was the passing of his former Conservatoire colleague, Konstantin Albrecht, who, over the years, had become a close friend: typically, Tchaikovsky was quick to instruct Jurgenson to provide, out of Tchaikovsky’s own funds, anything his old friend’s widow might need. Then at the beginning of September, on the eve of his departure for Hamburg to attend a revival of Iolanta and consult about the intended production of The Queen of Spades , he would learn of the death of his former schoolfriend, Alexey Apukhtin. ‘At this moment, as I write this, they’re reading the buria l service over Apukhtin!!!’ he would write to Bob. ‘Though his death was not unexpected, it’s still terrible and painful. He was once my closest friend.’

Tchaikovsky’s reaction to his new home at Klin was a different matter. During his June absence Alexey had done much to improve it, installing a new water-closet, repairing the fences and gates, and ordering and tending the garden. Tchaikovsky was equally delighted with Alexey’s son who, now fifteen months old, he confessed to spoiling shamelessly. Another joy was discovering fully a third English novelist, George Eliot, and revelling in The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Adam Bede, Middlemarch , and Scenes of Clerical Life , even seriously considering ‘The Sad fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton’ from this last one as a possible opera subject. However, there were more pressing creative demands, and in July he converted the first movement of the E flat Symphony into the Third Piano Concerto, and also read the proofs of a set each of piano pieces and songs. 2 Scoring the Sixth Symphony was his main musical task during August, and on returning from his brief visit to Hamburg on 12 September (and now precise dates begin to become important, for the narrative will become more detailed), he discussed with Modest the possibility of an opera on the subject drawn from George Eliot, as well as making plans to revise completely both his earlier operas, The Oprichnik and The Maid of Orleans . On 19 September he was in Moscow for two days, then visited Anatoly at Mikhailovskoye, near Nizhni-Novgorod. He delighted in his brother’s new home and his good spirits, and returned to Moscow on 29 September only because Modest’s new play, Prejudice , was to receive its premiere at the Maly Theatre. Next day he visited Taneyev to hear some new piano pieces by the twenty-year-old Rakhmaninov, whose ‘delightful’ opera, Aleko , he had heard at its premiere earlier in the year, and whose exceptional talents he was quick to recognize. (Rakhmaninov’s most famous piano piece, the C sharp minor Prelude, would follow within months of the opera.) Tchaikovsky decided to remain in Moscow for a further ten days because at Klin Alexey’s wife was about to produce a second baby, and he did not wish to be there until after the birth. On returning home he scored the Third Piano Concerto, completing it on 15 October. The cellist Anatoly Brandukov arrived to run through the Saint-Saëns concerto he was to play under Tchaikovsky’s direction in St Petersburg, and the two men journeyed to Moscow on the 19th to hear a Conservatoire concert, and for the trial rehearsal of Tchaikovsky’s new Sixth Symphony. On 21 October Tchaikovsky set out on his final journey, an overnight one to St Petersburg. A week later he conducted the premiere of his Symphonie pathétique . A further week, and he was dead.

The question of how Tchaikovsky came to die so suddenly, unexpectedly and mysteriously has long been a bone of sometimes vicious contention. The essence of the one ‘official’ story is that he committed suicide to prevent a particularly sensitive homosexual relationship he had entered into becoming public knowledge. Let me state here categorically: there is no proof that Tchaikovsky’s death was not from natural causes but from cholera caught through drinking unboiled water, though there are numerous threads, often spun by more than one witness, that seem to indicate clearly that something did occur, and attempts to argue that, since none of these can be proved, therefore none of them could have happened, simply will not do. The most significant trail begins with a meal on 1 November in Leiner’s Restaurant in St Petersburg, and is opened by Tchaikovsky’s nephew, Yury Davïdov, younger brother of Bob, who was one of the party. On arrival at the restaurant Tchaikovsky had asked for a glass of water. When the waiter had reported that they could not provide water because they had none that had been boiled to kill any cholera bacteria, Tchaikovsky replied, despite protests from the others, that he would drink cold, though unboiled, water. The waiter duly fetched it as Modest entered. Modest instantly forbade his brother to take the glass. But, as Yury recorded:

Laughing, Pyotr Ilich leaped forward to meet the waiter, and Modest Ilich pursued him. But Pyotr Ilich outstripped him, pushed his brother aside with his elbow, and succeeded in gulping down the fateful glass at one go. Modest Ilich reproved him angrily – and then the merriment began.

Among the party, incidentally, was Glazunov. He left no personal account of the meal, but he must have seen what happened and what ensued, and he later told at least two quite independent people that this incident had occurred, and that Tchaikovsky’s death was suicide.

Next morning Tchaikovsky, who was staying at Modest’s flat, was already showing symptoms. Modest left a very highly detailed account of what happened from this point until his brother’s death five days later. Its details sometimes make for very unpleasant reading, but Modest was obviously determined that it should be the more persuasive by loading it with very precise data. The problem is that Lev Bertenson, the very eminent doctor who attended Tchaikovsky, also wrote a detailed report of the course of the composer’s illness, and the two simply do not match – and not only in details, for when Bertenson chronicled it in print after Tchaikovsky’s death, it must have instantly been clear to some readers that, according to this, Tchaikovsky had died on 5 November, not the 6th. Modest’s account appeared five days days later, and ‘restored’ the missing day – which, of course, would only have served to fan the debate. Both men had closely observed the dying man. So how could this discrepancy have arisen? Who was telling the truth?

In fact, it is difficult to believe that the doctor would have printed anything other than the facts – but why in such detail? The only conclusion I can reach is that Bertenson feared Modest might massage events when published, and he was determined, in order to protect his own professional integrity, to forestall this with a detailed account that would crowd out the possibilities of manipulation by Modest. If this is the case, then Modest’s account contains an invented day, as well as other discrepancies. But there is a further curious statement. Although Modest gives an account of the evening meal at Leiner’s Restaurant, he makes no mention of a glass of water, but alleges that the fatal drink was taken at his apartment at lunch the following day. This is extraordinary, not only for such a potentially lethal supply being available to drink, but also because the symptoms of cholera appeared only four hours later, whereas the normal incubation period was twelve to twenty-eight hours. In addition, during Tchaikovsky’s illness bulletins had been posted on the apartment’s outer door, and Modest’s record is sometimes inconsistent with these current reports. Further, the regulations required that the body of a cholera victim should be removed in a closed coffin immediately after death, but instead Tchaikovsky’s remained in Modest’s apartment on open display, and requiems were held round the corpse. As Rimsky-Korsakov, one of the visitors, noted in his memoirs: ‘How odd that, though his death was the result of cholera, there was free access to the requiems. I remember that Verzhbilovich, who was completely drunk after a drinking bout, kissed the body on the face and head.’ Nor were these the only inconsistencies and oddities in Modest’s record.

There has been extensive and often acrimonious argument over these and other matters, and the only possible conclusion is that we are unlikely ever to know for certain what actually happened or – even more important – why it happened. But in 1979 one story emerged in the West that may provide a pointer to the mystery. Alexander Voitov had been a pupil at the School of Jurisprudence before the First World War and had amassed a great deal of information about some of the old boys of the school. On meeting Voitov, the Russian scholar, Alexandra Orlova, wrote down the following story from Voitov’s dictation:

Among the pupils who completed their studies at the School of Jurisprudence at the same time as Tchaikovsky there occurs the name of Jacobi. When I was at the school I spent all my holidays in Tsarskoye Selo with the family of Nikolay Borisovich Jakobi, who had been Senior Procurator to the Senate in the 1890s, and who died in 1902. Jacobi’s widow, Elizaveta Karlovna, was connected to my parents by affinity and friendship. She was very fond of me, and welcomed me warmly. In 1913, when I was in the last but one class in the school, the twentieth anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s death was widely commemorated. It was then, apparently under the influence of surging recollections, that Mrs Jacobi, in great secret, told me the story which, she confessed, had long tormented her. She said that she had decided to reveal it to me because she was now old and felt she did not have the right to take to the grave such an important and terrible secret. ‘You’, she said, ‘are interested in the history of the school and in the fates of its pupils, and therefore you ought to know the whole truth, the more so since it is such a sad page in the school’s history.’ And this is what she told me.

The incident took place in the autumn of 1893. Tchaikovsky was threatened with terrible misfortune. Duke Stenbok-Fermor, disturbed by the attention which the composer was paying to his young nephew, wrote a letter of accusation to the Tsar and handed the letter to Jacobi to pass on to Alexander III. Through exposure Tchaikovsky was threatened with the loss of all his rights, with exile to Siberia, with inevitable disgrace. Exposure would also bring disgrace upon the School of Jurisprudence and upon all the old boys of the school, Tchaikovsky’s fellow students. To avoid publicity Jacobi decided upon the following. He invited all Tchaikovsky’s former schoolfriends [he could trace in St Petersburg], and set up a court of honour which included himself. Altogether there were eight people present. Elizaveta Karlovna sat with her needlework in her usual place alongside her husband’s study. From time to time from within she could hear voices, sometimes loud and agitated, sometimes dropping apparently to a whisper. This went on for a very long time, almost five hours. Then Tchaikovsky came headlong out of the study. He was almost running, he was unsteady, and he went out without saying a word. He was very white and agitated. All the others stayed a long time in the study talking quietly. When they had gone Jacobi told his wife, having made her swear absolute silence, what they had decided about the Stenbock-Fermor letter to the Tsar. Jacobi could not withhold it. And so the old boys [of the school] had come to a decision by which Tchaikovsky had promised to abide. They required him to kill himself. A day or two later news of the composer’s mortal illness was circulating in St Petersburg.

Is this story true? I doubt we shall ever know. Does this matter? No, not really, for Tchaikovsky’s reputation rests not on the more sensational incidents and aspects of his life, but on his prodigious gift of great music to his own people and to us, and on not only the gratitude of his compatriots, but on the love and veneration they had conceived for this towering genius who was also such a generous, modest and – which comes through so clearly in the writings and memories of so many people – lovable man. The evidence of this was apparent immediately after his death became known. People crowded to Modest’s apartment to pay their respects, by the next day over three hundred wreaths had arrived not only from Russians but from abroad, from opera companies and private citizens. The state paid for his funeral, the arrangements were assigned to the Imperial Theatres, and Russian opera companies, branches of the RMS, various institutions, and Russian cities asked to be allowed to send representatives. The funeral service, during which the Imperial Chapel Choir sang music by Tchaikovsky, would take place in the Kazan Cathedral, the first time this had been allowed for a commoner. The building could hold six thousand people, but sixty thousand applied for tickets, and finally eight thousand were squeezed in. Members of the royal family attended the service and the Tsar watched the procession, observing, it is said, ‘We have many dukes and barons, but only one Tchaikovsky.’ Traffic had been diverted to enable the funeral cortège to proceed smoothly, but the silent crowds were so large that it took four hours to arrive at the cemetery. Here Tchaikovsky was buried near Glinka, Borodin and Musorgsky. In 1897 a monument with bust was erected over his grave, and in the next year a seated statue was placed in the St Petersburg Conservatoire.

Such memorials were sincere and fully merited public tributes to a revered genius, but to those who had known the man, they were of secondary importance. So how shall I finish this book, which has been as much a tribute to the man as a celebration of his music? I hope I may be excused for returning to the words with which I ended my four-volume study of Tchaikovsky – the words of Hermann Laroche, his lifelong, often difficult friend, but who had perceived, perhaps more than any other critic of the time, the clues to his creative greatness, and who had known the man so well:

You can analyse the technical merits of a score, you can indicate and enumerate the moral qualities and talents of the person in question, but it is not technical qualities – at least, not they alone – that embody what is fascinating in his music, nor do his talents and virtues impart to his personality its magnetic power. As in artistic creation, so in human personality: when all analytical and critical efforts have been made, there remains something undiscovered, something secret, and it is the very secret that is the most important element, the true essence of the subject. While making no claim to have explained the phenomenon, we still have to recall that phenomenon: we cannot forget that Pyotr Ilich, through his presence alone, brought into everything light and warmth. And if Europe mourns in him a major artistic force, one of the greatest of the second half of the nineteenth century, then it is only those persons who had the happiness of knowing him closely who know what a man has been lost through his death.

1 Some older readers may remember that during the 1940s, when Children’s Hour at 5 o’clock was a daily weekday BBC radio programme, Helen Henschel had a regular spot ‘talking about music’ each Monday.

2 As I noted in my prefatory material, I decided, very regretfully, that there would not be room in this book to take account of either Tchaikovsky’s songs or his shorter piano pieces. However, for readers wishing especially to investigate the songs, I would recommend this last set, the Six Romances, op. 73, on poems by Daniel Rathaus: the final song in particular is a masterpiece of economy and, for me, particularly moving. Also (or instead) – and because the songs have the advantage of being on French texts – readers might acquaint themselves with the Six Romances, op. 65 (the ‘Artôt’ songs). As for those who would wish to investigate the shorter piano works, I can recommend this last set, the Eighteen Pieces, op. 72 – a very varied, and sometimes surprising, collection. There is a stunning performance of these by the Russian pianist and conductor, Mikhail Pletnev.