Tchaikovsky was very well read and wrote about the music of many of his contemporaries. “I have bought Massenet’s The King of Lahore and play it with the greatest pleasure. I am quite in love with it. I would give a lot for my Maid of Orleans to be as good.

Tchaikovsky wrote about Delibes’s ballet Sylvia. “What charm and elegance, what riches in the melody, the rhythm, the harmony. I was ashamed. If I had known this music before, I would, of course, not have written Swan Lake.

“Bizet’s Carmen is one of the most charming operas of our time, a masterpiece. It is delightful from beginning to end. I cannot play the last scene without weeping. In a few years Carmen will be looked upon as a perfect masterpiece. I am convinced that in 10 years or so Carmen will be the most popular opera in the world. Bizet is head and shoulders above everybody.”

“I have heard Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust which is one of the miracles of art. When I Iistened I only stopped my sobs with difficulty.

“I have always been fond of Bellini. As a child I often cried under the strong impression made upon me by his beautiful melodies, which are impregnated with a kind of melancholy.

He wrote about having dinner at Dvořák’s home. “His Quintet was played. He is very nice to me; he was awfully friendly and I like his Quintet.”

Tchaikovsky was also friendly with Busoni, Saint-Saëns, and Brahms, though he didn’t care for his music. Nor did he like the music of the young Richard Strauss.

Boris Bekhterev has made piano solo arrangements of some of Tchaikovsky’s songs. One of them is Take My Heart Away.

Tchaikovsky was very enthusiastic about the young Chekhov calling him “our great new Russian literary talent. In my view he will be a pillar of our literature”. Chekhov dedicated a collection of his stories to Tchaikovsky and wrote “I am willing to stand day and night as an honorary watchman at the door of Pyotr Ilich’s house, so great is my respect for him.”

“I regard Lev Tolstoy as the most powerful and profound genius which literature has ever known. The main note which sounds on every page of Tolstoy, is – love, compassion for humanity at large not just for the insulted and the injured. I have constantly read and reread him, and I regard him as the greatest writer in the world, past or present.

“Tolstoy has convinced me that the artist who works not in response to an inner stimulus but with a careful calculation of the effect which he will achieve is not truly an artist, that his works will not last, that his success is ephemeral. I am completely converted to the truth of this view. One should compose in direct response to one’s own inclination and with no thought of pleasing this or that section of humanity.”

At a performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1st String Quartet Tolstoy burst into tears during the slow movement. This part of the quartet has become one of Tchaikovsky’s most popular compositions.

As Tchaikovsky became more and more popular his fame and celebrity also continued to grow. “More distressing and insufferable than anything else is my total inability to avoid the necessity of seeing and meeting endless people who are of no interest to me, whom I do not especially like or, at best, regard with indifference. Making speeches at dinners and suppers is one of the most disagreeable things I have to do.

“I am an unsociable person by nature. I have always found knowing people and meeting new people a source of acute mental strain. When my situation did not permit me to avoid meeting people, I did meet them, pretended that I enjoyed it, was compelled by sheer necessity to act out my part, and suffered agonies. Only God knows what I went through. What a torment it has been! I am morbidly shy. The poison of pathological shyness is the most terrible of poisons, and there is no cure. My fear of meeting people has become something like a mania. I am at peace only in the country or abroad, where nobody knows me.

Tchaikovsky complained about his life in Moscow: “From morning till night I either have to go out visiting or to receive visitors who require something of me. I haven’t sufficient character to turn invitations down firmly and take the risk of offending or annoying people – the result is that I waste heaps of time. He wrote about “forcing oneself to be worldly, to speak when one wants to be silent, to smile in a friendly manner when in one’s heart one has no cause to smile, to chatter meaninglessly when one needs to work.

“I must get away, get away somewhere as soon as I can. I want to see nobody, to know nothing about anything, to work, work, work. I would most ardently wish to live in constant isolation from the mass of humanity. I cannot stand the noise of towns at all. Every passing carriage makes me wild with rage, every shout, every sound grates on my nerves.

“The peace, the opportunity to work without any interruption – oh, how I value it all! I have no intention of chasing after fame and honors.

In 1885 Tchaikovsky composed his Manfred Symphony based on Byron’s poem Manfred. “I started on the sketches for the symphony and as often happens I got carried away and couldn’t stop. Never before have I put so much effort into a piece of work and never have I been so exhausted by it.

As he did with many of his compositions, after a few years Tchaikovsky turned cool towards it. “So far as Manfred is concerned, I find the work disgusting and loathe it heartily, with the exception of the first movement.

I am so happy and relaxed now precisely because I can, at least here in the country, live without seeing anybody apart from those with whom I can be myself.” In 1885 he rented a house in Maidanovo: “What a joy it is to be in my own place! What a blessing it is to know that nobody will come, nobody will interrupt my work, my reading, my walks!”

Tchaikovsky founded a school for the local children in Maidanovo. “The people here are especially poor. I’m very pleased about it!” Tchaikovsky continued to support the school for the rest of his life.

“I am overwhelmed with various young composers who want advice and guidance from me.” No matter how busy he was, he never refused help and always gave a detailed critique of the compositions that were submitted to him. He also handed out money to complete strangers in his everyday encounters in public.

In 1877 Tchaikovsky wrote from Italy to his patroness. “The trouble is depression, an all-consuming insane depression, which will not leave me for a moment. The weather is magnificent, there is plenty to see and to be distracted by—but I am still tormented by a gigantic, colossal depression! Scrutinizing and observing myself I soon found the cause. All I needed to do was start composing. But what?

“For me there is no happiness, none, none, none. Work, when it is in full swing, takes such a grip on you that you have no time to think about what you feel like and you forget everything.”

To dispel the rumors of his homosexuality, at the age of 37 he married Antonina Miliukova. “I seek marriage or some sort of public involvement with a woman so as to shut the mouths of those who are in a position to cause distress to those near to me.” The marriage was a disaster. Mismatched psychologically and sexually, the couple lived together for only two and a half months before Tchaikovsky left her and suffered a nervous breakdown during which he attempted to kill himself. Miliukova, who Tchaikovsky paid a monetary allowance to for the rest of his life, refused to grant him a divorce, and spent the last 20 years of her life in a mental hospital.

Eugene Onegin is the best-loved of Tchaikovsky’s 13 operas. It is based on Pushkin’s novel of the same name. Tchaikovsky wrote: “I doubt that Onegin is a great work. But there is no doubt that this music is to the greatest degree from the heart and it is the fruit of deep and sincere enthusiasm. I have never written a work as easily as I did this opera. What I have written literally poured forth from me; it was not contrived or forced out. I trembled with indescribable delight when I was writing it.

“I have played through almost the whole of Eugene Onegin at the piano! I’m ashamed to admit it, but the music brought tears of delight. And there were moments when I had to stop from excitement and my voice refused to sing because my throat was full of tears.

Sergei Lemeshev’s signature role was Lensky in Eugene Onegin, and beginning in 1927 the great tenor gave more than 500 performances of it, the last one on his 70th birthday, after suffering three heart attacks and having a lung removed. He referred to the character Lensky as his “dearest, beloved, and the utmost satisfaction of my creative work.” In a film of one performance, Lemeshev conveyed the heart of an 18-year-old young man thirsting for love, hope and life.

“To be entirely free and alone, to be able to visit the woods every day, to be amongst greenery and flowers all the time, to listen to the nightingale at one’s windows at night. One of the pleasures of country life is finding oneself far away from all the hideous monstrosities that are now taking place in towns and cities. I cannot pick up a newspaper without a feeling of horror! I can think of no more perfect form of happiness than lying on the grass drinking tea on a fine day in the woods.”

“There is nothing to compare with these moments of isolation, surrounded by greenery and flowers. These moments of holy rapture in the contemplation of nature are higher even than the delights of art. For a moment I could not hold back tears of ecstasy. I was so seized with rapture that I fell to my knees and thanked God for the intensity of my bliss. I am in a permanent condition of ecstasy. At such moments I am offended and irritated by any sharp reminder that I belong to the real world.”

While composing his 5th Symphony he wrote “Recently I have been haunted by the idea that I am played out, that my head is empty, that it is time to stop, etc. etc.”  In 1888, Tchaikovsky conducted the world premiere of his 5th Symphony and his tone poem Hamlet. The critics were hostile. However, both works were received with extreme enthusiasm by the audience and Tchaikovsky continued to conduct his 5th symphony in Russia and Europe.

Tchaikovsky’s enormous popularity drew a cult following. Beginning in his 40s Tchaikovsky was in considerable demand as a conductor at home and throughout Europe. Traveling to many European cities to conduct his music he wrote “I am getting more and more exhausted and simply do not know how I can face up to all that lies ahead. My life in Berlin was sheer torture. I didn’t have a minute to myself; from morning till night I had either to receive visitors or go out paying calls. The success which I have enjoyed everywhere is very pleasant. But what was dreadful and unbearable was the utter impossibility of getting away on one’s one, resting, reading, of doing anything at all, apart from this insufferable slavery to the social round.”

While composing his ballet The Sleeping Beauty he wrote “I think that the music for this ballet will be one of my best works and yet I wrote it incredibly quickly.” However, after the world premiere the press wrote “Was it actually a ballet? The music of Tchaikovsky does not suit the dances at all. It’s not even possible to dance to it. It unsuccessfully imitates ballet rhythms. It is a complete decline of choreographic art.”

One of Tchaikovsky’s most well known compositions is the 1812 Overture. Not to be confused with the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain, this overture is about the Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812.

That summer Napoleon led 680,000 French soldiers into Russia. After weeks of fighting, the French army attacked the Russian army at Borodino about 78 miles west of Moscow. It was one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the Napoleonic Wars. It was another victory for Napoleon and one week later his armies marched into Moscow ready to claim victory.

The Russian army had no intentions of surrendering at Moscow. Instead, knowing that Napoleon’s army was on its way, the retreating Russian army set fire to the city after most of Moscow’s inhabitants had been evacuated. The city was destroyed by the fires leaving Moscow barren and desolate. Famine, disease and the bitter cold overwhelmed the French and with their supply lines overextended they were forced to retreat. Napoleon suffered a disastrous defeat. Only a fraction of his army survived and the Russians were victorious.

To commemorate the victory Tsar Alexander I commissioned the construction of the Cathedral to Christ the Savior, “to signify our gratitude to divine providence for saving Russia.” 68 years later the cathedral was nearing completion. Tchaikovsky was commissioned to compose a patriotic overture to be played at its grand opening and to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of Tsar Alexander II, who was to be in attendance.

Tchaikovsky hated what he’d been asked to do, but he didn’t turn down such a prestigious and lucrative offer and completed the overture in 6 weeks. A brass band was to perform with the orchestra on a raised platform in front of the cathedral. Near the end of the overture all the church bells of Moscow were to ring . And as Tchaikovsky specified, canon shots would be fired.

However, in March of 1881 Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. Tchaikovsky did not conduct. No stage was erected. It was performed in a tent next to the still unfinished cathedral. There was no brass band, and there were no cannons.

It begins with a simple melody from the Eastern Orthodox hymn, O Lord save thy people. This represents the Russian people gathered throughout the nation to pray for divine intervention because the French army was on the march.

Next, the French national anthem La Marseillaise can be heard, which represents the invading French army. The Marseillaise is heard competing against Russian folk melodies. This represents the two armies fighting in battle as the French Army gets closer and closer to Moscow. Then we hear five canon shots which represent the Battle of Borodino. At this point the melody of La Marseillasie is at its most prominent and seems to indicate that Napoleon is winning.

When the French reached Moscow Napoleon just walked through the front door without a fight. But it was a trap! The Russians never intended to surrender. They had already abandoned the city, set it on fire and depleted the winter supplies. We then hear is a long passage of descending notes that represents the French army’s retreat out of Moscow and Russia.At the end of this long section the hymn we heard at the very beginning returns signifying prayers being answered. This time the melody is triumphant with church bells and chimes ringing in celebration. During the grand finale we hear eleven more cannon shots and the Russian national anthem, God Save the Tsar, as well as the clanging of large church bells.

The 1812 Overture cemented Tchaikovsky’s status as a Russian hero and an international superstar but Tchaikovsky didn’t like it! He wrote that the overture was “very loud and noisy and completely without artistic merit, obviously written without warmth or love.” He might be surprised to know that the 1812 Overture has become one of his most popular compositions performed all over the world including in the U.S. on the 4th of July with fireworks. Tchaikovsky’s opinion remains a lesson to us all -that it’s often best to leave it up to the audience to make the final judgement about music!

Here’s a short video: https://youtu.be/ZjgXCvKqRqU