To his extensive entourage, fellow colleagues, and large circle of friends, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was “a sweet and caring man, full of excellent manners.” Yet in his own words, the composer considered himself almost antisocial. “By nature, I am a

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, born on 7 May 1840 deep within the Ural Mountains roughly 600 miles east of Moscow, had Ukrainian, German, and French ancestry. His father Ilya Petrovitch Tchaikovsky, a mining engineer and manager of an iron works, traced

On 25 May 1888, Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the Director of the Imperial Theatres in St. Petersburg, approached Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). “I am planning to write a libretto on “La Belle au Bois Dormant” after Perrault’s fairy tale,” he writes. “I

On 30 November 1877, the German cellist and professor at the Moscow Conservatory Wilhelm Fitzenhagen performed the premier of Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme under the baton of Nikolay Rubinstein. Nadezhda von Meck wrote to Tchaikovsky, “today is the

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky arrived in St Petersburg on 22 October 1893 to oversee the first performance of his Sixth Symphony. Tchaikovsky was elatedly optimistic and wrote, “I think it will be successful; it is rare for me to write anything

In 1878, while in Switzerland, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) wrote the first part of his op. 42 cycle for violin and piano, Souvenir d’un lieu cher (Memory of a dear place). The three movements, Méditation, Scherzo, and Mélodie were published

In 1876, when Swan Lake was given its premiere in Moscow, it wasn’t the hit that we consider it today. The prima ballerina was involved in a scandal with a government official (he gave her jewels, she married someone else