A Singer’s Guide to the Great Composers: Tchaikovsky
For many years, like the great Scotsman music critic, Conrad Wilson, I tried to persuade people that the correct English spelling of Tchaikovsky was Chaikovsky, and that the initial T was completely unnecessary in English, as it is a direct transliteration from Russian to German, and therefore redundant here. As you can see from the title above I failed, but would ask you to indulge me at least for the duration of this part of a Singer’s Guide!
When I was secretary of the George Watson’s College Music Society back in 1972, I managed to persuade Conrad Wilson to come to the school to give a talk about music in Scotland and music journalism as a profession. As a nod to ‘Private Eye’ at the time, which always called the ex-Prime Minister, Harold Wislon, I got the Headmaster, Roger Young, to read out a notice at Assembly, announcing the forthcoming meeting of the Society. “Come along to Mus Soc and hear the famous critic, Conrad Wislon, tell us about being a music cirtic”, I wrote. With hindsight, I should perhaps have drawn the Headmaster’s attention to my little jest, as he read out, in his famously stentorian voice, my bons mots, stumbling twice on Wislon and cirtic, and finishing with a clear and non-cryptic message to see him in his office later! Conrad’s talk was, however, a success, and I got to know him over the years as a fine critic and programme compiler for the EIF. He was scrupulously fair in his criticism, a trait I try to follow now that I am treading, somewhat, in his footsteps. One didn’t always agree with him, but you could see where he was coming from. He was always fair about my singing (i.e.. he liked it!), and lamented my long and incomprehensible exile from Scottish Opera, as do I.
Returning to Pyotr Ilyich Chaikovsky, born in 1840 in Votkinsk, a long way from anywhere important in Imperial Russia, the boy showed great musical promise from a young age, but was sent, at the age of 10, to the Imperial School of Jurisprudence in St Petersburg, basically to train for the Civil Service. This experience was to haunt him all his life, and he found the rigours and discipline of the school difficult. When his mother died of cholera in 1854, he was severely traumatised, and although he made good friends at the school, it is very likely that these formative years contributed to the emotional turmoil which he experienced in later life. Graduating in 1859, he entered the civil service in a minor capacity, rising through the ranks, but it became clear that his musical side was coming to the fore, and he enrolled in the newly created St Petersburg Conservatory in 1862.
Success there led to an invitation to become Professor of Music Theory at the Moscow Conservatory, and for several years, he combined teaching with some composing and being a music critic. This job took him to Europe where he lauded Beethoven, had doubts about Brahms and Schumann, and attended the premieres of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, intrigued by the staging but equivocal about the music!
Chaikovsky’s sexuality has been written about for years, and I need not waste time on it here. Suffice to say that he was almost certainly homosexual, found this fact extremely difficult, made a disastrous marriage in 1877, and had a very strange relationship with a benefactress, Nadezhda von Meck, a wealthy widow whom he never met.
After the collapse of his marriage almost immediately after exchanging vows, he travelled incessantly all over Europe and Russia, funded by Madame von Meck, and gave himself up to composition. Many great works, concerti and symphonies and the opera ‘Eugene Onegin’ were composed at this time. Despite criticism by the highly influential “Mighty Handful” (Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov), Chaikovsky benefited hugely from a speech by the great writer Dostoyevsky in 1880, calling for the two factions in Russian Art (Western influence or pure Russianism) to come together for the good of all.
Whereas some had looked suspiciously at Chaikovsky’s music as far too westernised, he now gained support for the unique quality of his writing, and in 1882, he had a huge success with his 1812 Overture, celebrating the defence of Russia and the defeat of Napoleon. This one piece, about which the composer was somewhat ambivalent, proved to be his most successful work financially, complete with cannons, bells and brass band! Indeed, it was the first work by Chaikovsky that I was aware of as a child, as part of my parents’ box set of Favourite Classical Music, as chosen by the Reader’s Digest!
He was becoming a major celebrity, despite his lack of self-confidence, his stage fright and his unease in company, and began to conduct more. His 5th Symphony, premiered in 1888, proved very popular, and he conducted it all over Europe and in America. Indeed, in 1891, he conducted the inaugural concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall, whose construction was funded by Dunfermline’s own Andrew Carnegie. At a recent opening at the Carnegie Museum in Dunfermline to celebrate my friend, the artist Calum Colvin’s portrait of Carnegie, I met the industrialist’s direct descendant, who spoke fascinatingly about her famous ancestor. I wish I had known then that Chaikovsky conducted at its opening.
In October 1893, the composer conducted the premiere of his 6th Symphony, the so-called ‘Pathétique’ (Chaikovsky called it ‘Passionate’ in Russian, which was mistranslated into French Pathétique, and hence even further mistranslated into English Pathetic) in St Petersburg. There has been much speculation as to why, after the triumphant third movement, which audiences often applaud as if it were the end, Chaikovsky chose to compose a final movement of supreme sadness and melancholy. Central to this debate, is the fact that nine days after the premiere, the composer was dead, apparently catching cholera from unboiled water. Was the symphony a hidden suicide note? Was there some deep connection between the symphony and his death? We shall never know, although bad luck seems the most likely explanation, but there is always a place for a good conspiracy theory. Ken Russell’s wildly over the top film in 1971, ‘The Music Lovers’ with Richard Chamberlain and Glenda Jackson, certainly fanned the flames.
Amazingly, I only ever sang in one Chaikovsky opera, ‘Iolanta’, premiered in 1892 in St Petersburg. This was his last opera, a one-act piece with a libretto by his brother Modest, and was based on a Danish play, ‘King René’s Daughter’. At the premiere, it was played as a double bill with the ballet, ‘The Nutcracker’. Interestingly, the German and Viennese premieres were conducted by Gustav Mahler!
I had worked a couple of times at the Britten-Pears School in Snape, near Aldeburgh, with the amazing soprano, Galina Vishnevskaya, when I was asked, in 1984, to sing a small role in a concert version of ‘Iolanta’ with Galina in the title role and Rostropovich conducting. The great Swedish tenor, Nicolai Gedda, was scheduled to sing the lead tenor, Vaudemont, but unfortunately had to cancel due to illness. It was a fantastic concert with Galina, slightly past her best but still glorious, dominating the hall, and Dimiter Pekov (an excellent Bulgarian bass) as King René. My youthful contribution as Bertrand, the Keeper of the Castle, was scarcely notable, but it was fun to be part of a big event. The main performers went on to record the opera in Paris a few weeks later, although not with the wonderful Scottish Bertrand! It is a typical Chaikovsky work, full of invention and fine melody. I remember singing René’s big aria in concert for a few years after, although its huge range, over two octaves with a big top F and an exposed low one, was rather too much for me at the time.
I have sadly never sung, nor even heard live, Chaikovsky’s second most famous opera ‘The Queen of Spades’, but it contains a wealth of beautiful melodies. The libretto, also by Modest, is based on a novella by Pushkin, involving intrigue and gambling at the court of Catherine the Great, and once again its Viennese premiere (and its US premiere at the New York Met) was conducted by Mahler.
Pushkin was the source for Chaikovsky’s masterpiece, ‘Yevgeny Onegin’ (or Eugene Onegin, as it is named in English), which he wrote at an earlier stage in his career, and which was premiered in 1879 in Moscow. The poet’s verse novel was published serially over the years from 1825 to 1832, with the accepted final version published in 1837, after his death earlier that year. There is a delicious but tragic irony that a story which revolves around a fatal duel, fought unnecessarily, should be mirrored in real life, as Pushkin himself was killed in a duel. How utterly stupid!
Chaikovsky adapted the novel to form his libretto, with additions by his own hand. The result is a very beautiful text, which the composer was able to turn into one of the finest operas. The fact that we want at various points to go into the opera and physically tell the characters to sort their lives out adds to the direct reaction that the work evokes. The inexorable march of fate controls each destiny, but one feels that this destiny could and should have been interrupted to mutual benefit.
The depiction of life on a 19th century Russian country estate is magnificently rendered, and the characters acquire real depth throughout the work. The final scene, set in the glittering world of St Petersburg aristocracy, is both glorious and deadening. The heroine Tatiana’s journey from naive girl to worldly-wise, and world weary, princess is shattering in its emotional range, and when interpreted by a genius like Galina Vishnevskaya (in my opinion, her finest role), it transports the opera to a higher level.
One of the many unfathomable quirks of my career has been that, despite the role being almost perfect for me, especially now in my 60s, I have never sung Prince Gremin on stage. I have sung his aria countless times in concerts, but, for some reason, it has never come up in conversations with my agent and opera managements. It is a small role, occurring only in the last act, and consists almost exclusively of the wonderful aria, “Lyubvi fsye vozraste pakorniy”, when Gremin explains to Onegin that his old age has been made beautiful and meaningful by his marriage to the delightful Tatiana, and that, in the midst of all the ghastly courtiers and charlatans of St Petersburg, her light shines like a star in the night sky. This is the last thing that Onegin wants to hear, as he realises that this Tatiana is the girl he spurned years before and who remains as a beacon of hope in his humdrum, wasted life. Too late, he confronts Tatiana, who confesses that she still loves him, but is now bound to her husband by a sense both of duty and honour, traits that Onegin has long lost!
It is truly a tragic story, with a marvellous text, and Chaikovsky’s highly romantic but precisely constructed music is perfect for the piece. There are splendid choruses and grand scenes, combined with intimate arias, mainly following the old tradition of A-B-A, the mainstay of baroque vocal music in the da Capo aria but here given the full romantic treatment. Tatiana’s famous letter scene, when she is trying to compose a love letter to Onegin in the full heady rush of adolescent passion, is a tour de force of vocal writing, and listening to Galina’s recording from the 50s, when she was being used as the plaything of the Soviet arts world, is earth-shattering in its wild emotion. I couldn’t find a copy of the CD on Amazon, but you can download it as an MP3 recording. ‘Search for Vishnevskaya’, conducted by Boris Khaikin – you will not be disappointed. Even the old Melodiya sound is not bad.
Chaikovsky wrote many wonderful songs too, some of which I have sung over the years. Again, he often chose to use the A-B-A construction, which, by the late 19th century, sounds rather old-fashioned, especially in the context of what was going on in German Lieder at the time. However, this quite strict formula has produced some marvellous songs, the highlight for me being the song known to us as “None but the Lonely Heart”. This is Chaikovsky’s take on the great Goethe poem, “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” - only those who know what longing is, can know what sorrow I am feeling. Translated into Russian, it somehow takes on an even deeper intensity, and never fails to get the audience weeping! Bizarrely, there is even an English version by Frank Sinatra, using Chaikovsky’s melody. Really!
In my research for this article, I have listened to a lot of Chaikovsky’s music, both vocal and non-vocal, and it has reminded me what an absolutely fabulous composer he was, full of invention, emotion and melody. From the big orchestral pieces to the intimate chamber music, it brought home to me what genius he possessed, and how, perhaps, we need to reassess his importance in musical history. Whenever we take someone’s work for granted, we often find ourselves dismissing what is actually superb for banality. I sometimes think this happens with very famous music, like Handel’s ‘Messiah’, or Bizet’s ‘Carmen’, or Beethoven symphonies. They are rightly famous because they are so good, not because we listen to them a lot.
Anyway, if you reckon you may have neglected Chaikovsky for a while, may I encourage you to look afresh at this great composer, even without his initial T.
