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