Tchaikovsky
The Man and His Music

David Brown.
New York: Pegasus Books. 2007. 460 pp.
ISBN 13: 978-1933648309

Summary for the Busy Executive: A good intro for non-specialists.

Most composers lead dull outward lives.  What makes them interesting
goes into their music.  Tchaikovsky isn't really an exception.  We don't
want to read about Tchaikovsky because he fought in wars, romanced
hundreds of conquests, solved seemingly intractable political questions,
or explored the Amazon.  A truthful movie about Tchaikovsky's life would
show him at a table, writing, much of the time.  A biographer therefore
has a tough road to hoe.

David Brown has produced probably the definitive Tchaikovsky bio,
in four large volumes (Tchaikovsky: The Early Years, The Crisis Years,
The Years of Wandering, The Final Years).  Few other than a Tchaikovsky
fanatic or a scholar actually need it.  This shorter volume will serve.
Although Brown does provide valuable insight into Tchaikovsky's working
methods (he usually sketched major scores fairly quickly, and he worked
according to a daily routine), he knows that we read about Tchaikovsky
because we want to know his music better.

Accordingly, Brown provides non-technical guides for the general listener
of major pieces.  Inevitably, some of these are better than others.  All,
however, require that the reader "follow along" with a recording of the
work.  That may hinder those readers who don't want to invest in a lot
of CDs.  Incidentally, he rates these works with a star system.  Fortunately,
he doesn't expect you to agree with him.  Good thing, too.  Brown
underrates one of my favorites, the First Symphony, to me a masterpiece
of invention and one of the best symphonic openings he ever came up with.

I would have appreciated more analysis directed toward elucidating
how astonishingly original Tchaikovsky was.  Brown appreciates this and
compares the composer to Tolstoy as an artistic force (so did Tchaikovsky's
contemporaries), but he lacks specifics, perhaps because he doesn't want
to scare away the amateur reader.  Well, hell, I'm one amateur who felt
the lack.  Despite accurate descriptions of the music, Brown doesn't
bring us any closer to its essence.

It's an important point, because even today Tchaikovsky gets condescension
from writers who apparently have no idea what he was about and whose
ears seem stuffed with wax.  Stravinsky's enthusiasm helped remove the
taint from this music, but you still find writers who feel they have to
boil their ears after listening to Romeo and Juliet.  Furthermore - and
Brown alludes to this, but fails to explore the depth of the problem -
we very rarely hear Tchaikovsky's most popular scores as he wrote them.
Editors have silently messed with his orchestration, as well as excised
passages or rearranged major sections.  For example, the first recording
of the honest-to-Pyotr version of Variations on a Rococo Theme appeared
in 1992 - Wallfisch and Simon on Chandos.  This sort of mucking about
from People Who Knew Better also plagued the second piano concerto, heard
for over a hundred years in a bowdlerized version, and undoubtedly
hindered its acceptance.

For me, the book's major strength lay in bringing attention to major
works not all that well known.  For example, Tchaikovsky composed fewer
symphonies than operas, yet only two of the latter get performed with
any regularity: Yevgeny Onegin and Pique Dame.  Brown clearly loves the
operas, although he loves them with his eyes wide open to their flaws.
He makes me want to hear all of them.  He talks about Tchaikovsky's
sacred music, all too seldom performed in the West.  The Nine Sacred
Pieces especially deserve better.  I wish he would have talked more of
Tchaikovsky's secular choral works, because one can find here also gems
of composition.

If you don't know much about Tchaikovsky, this book provides a decent
starting point. If you know the music but want to explore further, try
to find something else.

Steve Schwartz

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