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Tchaikovsky stood out from many of his contemporaries in his great fund of melody and quality of that melody—sweet and at times bittersweet in tone, sensuous in the undulations of the melodic line, and lush in texture, yet providing a clear periodic structure.Tchaikovsky demonstrated the Romantic ideals of color, emotional expressiveness, and dramatic intensity. Tchaikovsky was also typically Romantic in his choice of subject matter in his operas and symphonic poems. He leaned toward doomed lovers and heroines.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, a small province town. He began piano lessons at age five with a local woman. Musically precocious, he could read music as well as his teacher within three years. However, his parents' passion for his musical talent soon cooled. Feeling inferior due to their humble origins, the family sent Pyotr in 1850 to a school for the "lesser nobility" or gentry called the School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg to secure him a career as a civil servant. The minimum age for acceptance was 12. For Pyotr, this meant two years boarding at the School of Jurisprudence's preparatory school, 800 miles (1,300 km) from his family. It was to be the first of two brutally symbolic departures. The second brutal leave-taking came on June 25, 1854 with his mother's death from cholera. This was such a harsh blow that Pyotr could not inform his former governness Fanny Dürbach of it until two years later. While music was not considered a high priority at the Institite, Tchaikovsky was taken to the theater and the opera with classmates regularly.
Tchaikovsky graduated on May 25, 1859 with the rank of titular counselor, the lowest rung of the civil service ladder. On June 15, he was appointed to the Ministry of Justice. Six months later he became a junior assistant to his department; two months after that, a senior assistant. There Tchaikovsky remained for the rest of his three-year civil service career. The following year Tchaikovsky attended the new St Petersburg Conservatory, but he did not give up his civil service post until his father agreed to support him. From 1862 to 1865, he studied harmony, counterpoint and fugue with Zaremba. Anton Rubinstein, director and founder of the Conservatory, taught him instrumentation and composition. Aftwards he was invited to become professor of harmony, composition, and the history of music at the Moscow Conservatory.
After his favorite pupil Vladimir Shilovsky, with whom he had a close bond for a decade and was gay aswell, had married suddenly in late April 1877. This set Pyotr to look out for a woman to marry, which he found in Antonina a former student of his...... The brief time with his wife drove him to the brink of emotional ruin. He may have hoped in marrying that marriage would lend him public respectability while he continued having sex privately with other men. The brief time with his wife drove him to the brink of emotional ruin. Then Nadezhda von Meck, wealthy widow of a Russian railway tycoon and an influential patron of the arts came in his life, she became his patroness and gave him an annual subsidy of 6,000 rubels. With von Meck's patronage came a relationship that, at her insistence, was mainly epistolary. They exchanged over 1,200 letters, some of them quite lengthy, between 1877 and 1890. For both of them, these letters would become a solace and a safety valve, filled with details extraordinary for two people who would never meet. Assured of a regular income from von Meck, he wandered around Europe and rural Russia. Not staying long in any one place, he lived mainly alone, avoiding social contact whenever possible.
During 1884, Tchaikovsky began to shed his unsociability and restlessness. In 1885 Tsar Alexander III conferred upon Tchaikovsky the Order of St. Vladimir (fourth class). With it came hereditary nobility. The tsar's decoration was a visible seal of official approval that helped the composer's social rehabilitation. That year he resettled in Russia. 1885 also saw his debut as a guest conductor. Within a year, he was in considerable demand throughout Europe and Russia in appearances which helped him overcome a life-long stage fright and boosted his self-assurance. Tchaikovsky died on November 6, 1893, nine days after the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique. His death has traditionally been attributed to cholera, most probably contracted through drinking contaminated water several days earlier, but then that's just the official version. However not unlikely theories about enforced 'suicide' have persisted and infact they prove death from cholera extremely unlikely.
You decide ! There's a whole page on it here
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Millenium Treasures - Classical Treasures (99, 77min ^162mb)
Hello, forgot to include the artwork but you can get it here
01 - Johan Strauss II - An der Schonen Blauen Donau, Op.314 (9:38)
02 - Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Piano concerto No.1 in B flat minor, Op. 23 (20:03)
03 - Jules Massenet - Meditation de Thais (5:04))
04 - Frederic Chopin - Waltz in D flat, Op.64 No.1 (1:52)
05 - Jean Sibelius - Finlandia, Op.26 - Tone Poem (9:36)
06 - Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake Suite - Scene 1, Act 2 'Swan Theme' (2:29)
07 - Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake Suite - Waltz, Act 1 (5:36)
08 - Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake Suite - Dance of the Cygnets, Act 2 (1:28)
09 - Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake Suite - Introdcution & Second Dance of the Queen, Act 2 (6:20)
10 - Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake Suite - Scene, Act 4 (4:20)
11 - Sergei Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.18 - I-Moderato (10:46)
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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !
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