Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

An emblematic composer of Russian Romanticism, Tchaikovsky created a passionate, often tormented and richly orchestrated body of work, dominated by the celebrated ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, Symphony no. 6 "Pathétique", the operas Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, and the piano concertos. Born into a noble family of Cossack origin on the part of his mining engineer father, and French on the part of his mother, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk in the Urals on May 7, 1840, one of seven siblings. Showing a precocious talent for the piano from the age of four, he took lessons with Maria Paltchikova and studied in St. Petersburg, entering the boarding school of the Imperial College of Jurisprudence in 1850. Four years later, his mother died of cholera, creating an emotional void in the teenager that would nourish his work. Continuing to take music and singing lessons, he directed a choir and completed his law studies, graduating in 1859. He worked for two years at the Ministry of Justice while attending classes with Nikolai Zaremba at the Russian Musical Society, before joining Anton Rubinstein's St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1862. In 1866, Rubinstein's brother, Nikolai Rubinstein, invited him to teach at the Moscow Conservatory, which would later bear his name. Tchaikovsky held this post until 1878, by which time his career as a composer had already taken shape, with Symphony No. 1 "Winter Dreams " (1866), the symphonic poem Fatum (1868) and the opera The Voevode (1869), the fantasy overture Roméo et Juliette (1870), two string quartets (1871, 1874), Symphony no. 2 "Petite Russie" (1872), the overture La Tempête (1873), piano pieces including the cycle Les Saisons (1876), and melodies. His establishment as a composer was encouraged by the patroness Nadejda von Meck, who paid him an annual pension of six thousand roubles, and then, in his later years, by Emperor Alexander III, whose pension amounted to three thousand roubles. Linked to the Group of Five, he made his mark with music inspired as much by traditional Russian folklore, as in Snégourotchka, as by Western composition methods. After the unsuccessful operas Opritchnik (1874) and Vakula the Blacksmith (1876, revised as Tchérévitchki in 1887), Tchaikovsky set to work on his Piano Concerto No. 1, which was revived several times before becoming a classic of the repertoire. Entering his mature period, he also composed the Variations on a Rococo Theme for cello and orchestra, the fantasia Francesca da Rimini and the ballet Swan Lake, a hit that never left the stage. His marriage on July 18, 1877 to conservatory student Antonina Milioukova was more a signal to dispel rumors of his homosexuality than an act of love. An avid traveler to major European cities, he attended the opening of the Bayreuth Festival, which he wrote about in one of his articles for the newspaper Russkiye vedomosti. He completes the opera Eugene Onegin, based on Pushkin, premiered in Moscow on March 29, 1879, to moderate acclaim before establishing it as a masterpiece of operatic art. His Symphony No. 4, from the same period, opens a trilogy on the theme of destiny, underlying other works. The violin concerto, also criticized for its lighter tone, eventually made its mark on the repertoire. These prolific years also saw the birth of the Piano Concerto No. 2 (1879), the Serenade for Strings, the Italian Capriccio and theOverture 1812 (1880), and a cycle of four Orchestral Suites, ending in 1887 with the one entitled "Mozartiana". In 1885, Tchaikovsky left Moscow to settle in Klin, in a house that was later converted into a museum. He wrote the "Manfred" Symphony and began a conducting career that took him to the United States five years later for a unique tour of his works. In 1888, his Symphony no. 5 received unqualified applause, followed by the ballet Sleeping Beauty (1889), before tackling the writing of his grand opera The Queen of Spades. Successfully premiered in St. Petersburg on December 19, 1890, this psychological drama was again based on a text by Pushkin, with a libretto conceived by his brother, Modest Tchaikovsky. Two years later, on December 18, 1892, his last opera Iolanta and the ballet The Nutcracker, from which an orchestral suite was taken, were premiered simultaneously. A week earlier, the string sextet Souvenir de Florence was premiered. Now Russia's most popular composer, whose melancholy, if not fatality, permeates his entire oeuvre, Tchaikovsky devoted the last year of his life to his musical testament, Symphony No. 6 "Pathétique", whose order of movements and decrescendo of lament are a novelty. The composer himself gave the premiere in St. Petersburg on October 28, 1893. The possibility of a "secret program" linked to his homosexuality and his relationship with his nephew Vladimir Davydov, to whom the work is dedicated, perpetuates the legend surrounding Tchaikovsky's death nine days later, on November 6, 1893, at the age of 53. The official cause of his death was the cholera raging in St. Petersburg at the time, challenged by the hypothesis that he committed suicide on orders, following the judgment of a court of honor made up of former law student comrades, to escape a scandal implicating him in an affair with a young officer close to the imperial family.