Tchaikovsky

New York Times ^ | December 8, 2002 | DIRK OLIN

[Borges]

Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's ''Nutcracker'' will be performed on stages from small towns to the New York City Ballet this month -- and in ''literally hundreds of productions around the world,'' according to Jeffrey Milarsky, music director and conductor of the Columbia University Orchestra. That, along with the ''1812 Overture,'' ''Swan Lake'' and certain other works, means that Tchaikovsky, as Milarsky says, ''is played more than any composer.'' Yet where Milarsky and other members of the classical music establishment herald a revival of esteem for Tchaikovsky during recent years, Milton Babbitt, 86, a giant of the serialism movement in modern composing, has a problem with him. ''He said Brahms was an untalented bastard -- that's a quote,'' Babbitt says. ''But I've learned a lot from Brahms, whereas I can't say that about Tchaikovsky.'' Richard Einhorn, 50, whose compositions have been performed from Lincoln Center to the Netherlands, makes even less effort to disguise his antipathy: ''Tchaikovsky has as much to do with real classical music as the Three Tenors have to do with real opera. Most contemporary composers I know haven't listened to Tchaikovsky since the third grade, when they were forced to watch 'Fantasia' and gagged.''

Babbitt and Einhorn echo earlier derogations of his work as too sentimental (the Victorians) or insufficiently Russian (a group of composers who were Tchaikovsky's late-19th-century contemporaries), but the emergent issue now is a question that could throw what the critic Terry Teachout calls ''the Tchaikovsky wars'' into Armageddon. Is Tchaikovsky's music gay?

[Borges]

Did you read the 1995 Anthony Holden biography? It’s very good. Tchaikovsky was a warm soul but had serious issues!

[MinuteGal]

No, I have not read the Holden biography. I'll check it out on Amazon after I post this. It would fit in well with my adult lifetime passion, the history and study of czarism in the 200 year period prior to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

Thanks for the tip.

Leni

[MinuteGal]

Aw, the 1995 Holden biography is out of print, according to Amazon's website. I'll have to probe some other sources (when I have some time, sheesh......).

Leni

[Borges]

I got it from the library.

[Borges]

Also, the David Brown single edition book ‘The Man and his Music’ is still in print.

[MinuteGal]

Thanks. I'm also going to try a musty, old second-hand book store near me that's owned by a musty, old gentleman. He has EVERYTHING. Problem is, I know it'll be an hour and a half before I can pull myself away from browsing the treaure trove.

Leni

[Borges]

Love this photo.

[MinuteGal]

That is some photo. I just sat and sat and studied it for 5 minutes with the mind running hither and thither as to what I see.

I can't get enough of the photos you post of famous composers.....some, like the one of Chopin, I didn't even think photography was common yet. Please keep posting them.

By coincidence, as I'm typing this I'm listening to Tchaikovsky's "Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor" with Madame Olga Kern, pianist. Good freeping music!

Leni

[Borges]

That photo was taken in the last year of his life. He looks a lot older than 53.

[MinuteGal]

Yes, he certainly does look older than 53.....and dreadfully unhappy, suspicious and hurt, also. I'm almost relieved he was able to produce such delightful music such as to be found in the Nutcracker and other works given what I imagine was a rather short and difficult personal life.

Leni

[Borges]

The Nutcracker was premiered less than a year before that photo was taken!