Mitch Friedfeld <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Just when I start to lose my patience with Tchaikovsky -- the endings
>that sound the same, the wholesale lifting of passages from one piece to
>another, that sort of thing -- I again become a fan.
>
>Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky.  One would be wise not to dismiss this
>mega-popular composer simply on the grounds of over-familiarity.

Or any other composer on the same grounds ('tis the fault of the listener),
but I think I know exactly what you mean about Tchaikovsky.  I had a
similar experience to yours when listening to Dorati's recording of the
"Winter Dreams" symphony (which always sends me back to those bleak winters
in Chicago when I was a college student and was beginning to collect music
'seriously')a few days ago; such charm and, above all, such melodiousness.
Stravinsky's remark, when I first read it, crystallized for me why I am
still in love with so many of Tchaikovsky's works: "He was the most
Russian of us all."

Ramon Khalona