The Subject line refers to an article from an early BBC Music Magazine
article, which I have only read about, not actually read.

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.  First, a few months
ago I attended an excellent performance of the Violin Concerto, conducted
by (former?) Listmember Joel Lazar.  The other day I heard a white-hot
version of the same piece done by none other than Nigel Kennedy.  I was
again transfixed by the Piano Concerto No.  1, which I heard on the
radio just last week.  And Thursday night, I attended the NSO's annual
All-Tchaikovsky program, conducted by Leonard Slatkin and held at the
Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts.

What a venue that is!  We sat on the lawn, hundreds of feet away, and you
could still hear just about every orchestral nuance (I know, how do I know
what I didn't hear?).  The pizzicatos were crisp; the subtle bits I knew
were there, I could hear, and so forth.  And the informality of the place
makes me much more tolerant of food noise (people are encouraged to bring
picnic dinners, which we did), cell phone ringing (yep, heard some), and
aircraft overhead (a helicopter went by at a particularly unfortunate time
during the first piece).  Over 5,000 people attended, for many of whom I'm
sure this is their only live classical music concert in a year.

Slatkin conducted Marche Slave, an expanded Nutcracker Suite, the Romeo
and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, and, of course, the 1812 Overture.  I started
to lose my patience with Marche Slave, for the main reasons cited above.
First, there is a wholesale lifting of 1812 material.  Now it is true that
Marche Slave predates 1812, so I guess I should be annoyed with 1812; but
the part I'm thinking of is so familiar from 1812 that it sounds like
Marche Slave is the freeloader, not the other way around.  And the ending
was Tchaikovskian to the core, with the upside and downside that that
implies.

But I forgot about all that during the Nutcracker excerpts.  When melody
after glorious melody hits you one after the other, you can't help but buy
into what's happening.  The audience couldn't help but applaud at several
points despite the fact that the piece was obviously not yet over.  Same
with R&J; the famous tune had everybody humming.  And what can you say
about 1812? Sure, the cannons are trite now, and everybody knows the
melodies.  But if you really listen to the piece, even a musical
sophisticate will find something that will enchant.  The part that struck
me (*not* a musical sophisticate, I assure you) this time was how the
climactic melody bounced back and forth from the NSO proper to the
off-stage brass, a stereo effect from way back in the 19th century.
The church bells, the cannon, man, what a piece of theater.

Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky.  One would be wise not to dismiss this
mega-popular composer simply on the grounds of over-familiarity.

Mitch Friedfeld