Tchaikovsky
The Man and his Music
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
This volume uniquely combines a lively biography of one of the best-loved composers of the nineteenth century with a detailed chronological guide to much of his oeuvre, from the most popular - Swan Lake or the 1812 Overture - to the lesser known pieces. David Brown enthusiastically and sensitively guides the reader through Tchaikovsky's music in the context of his life. His writing on the music is accessible and informative, both for the professional musician and the keen amateur listener. The biographical writing includes fascinating quotations from the composer's letters, and those of his friends; the Tchaikovsky that emerges is, despite his periodic struggle with depression, a man with a positive attitude to life, and a kind and supportive friend to many around him. This is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Tchaikovsky, his music, or the culture of the time.
'One of the finest one-volume biographies to have appeared in recent years, written with such insight that it feels as though one is on a hot-line to the composer himself . . . by the end I felt I knew Tchaikovsky so much better. A classic.' Classic FM Magazine
'I can't imagine a more intelligently sympathetic treatment of the man and his music.' BBC Music Magazine
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This is the valedictory work of British music professor Brown, a reduction to manageable length of his own massive and magisterial four-volume study of the composer and his work superbly crafted for a general reader. Brown's style is easy and confiding, managing to be knowledgeable and illuminating about the music without burying it in technical jargon, and he has devised an excellent scoring system to guide his readers through the key works and explain why he has chosen these above all others. (His personal favorites, incidentally, are, rather surprisingly, Eugen Onegin, The Sleeping Beauty and the Sixth Symphony.) It is hard to imagine the works, especially the lesser-known ones, better described and evoked than here; Brown would be wonderful at concert notes or CD booklets. About the life he has little that is new to add, but offers some remarkable insights from Tchaikovsky himself on his working methods and the nature of his inspiration. The story of his ghastly marriage and his bizarre relationship with Nadezhda von Meck is given in great and sympathetic detail. On the vexed question of the composer's mysterious death did he deliberately drink unboiled water and poison himself so as not to bring dishonor on his old school because of a homosexual liaison? Brown is noncommittal but, as usual, thorough in setting forth what is known and what only surmised. The book is a triumph of biographical and musical scholarship.
