The Literary Muse

This week Donald Macleod reflects on five aspects of Tchaikovsky. Today he explores Tchaikovsky, the lover of literature, and some of the writers who inspired him.

Tchaikovsky was exposed to a wide range of literature from a very early age. His governess called him “little Pushkin” because of his sensitivity to poetry. He read voraciously – his favourites, apart from Pushkin, being Gogol, Tolstoy and Ostrovsky. He read a lot of Dostoevsky too, but it got him down. Thackeray and Dickens he read in translation – “about the only two men I forgive for being English,” he said. The writers behind today’s music: Byron, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Daniil Maximovich Rathaus, and Tchaikovsky himself.

12 Romances, Op 60 (No 5, ‘Simple Words’)
Konstantin Lisovsky, tenor
Svetlana Zvonareva, piano

Manfred, symphony in four scenes after Byron's dramatic poem, op 58
(2nd mvt, Vivace con spirito)
Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor

Eugene Onegin, Op 24 (Act 1 scene 2)
Nuccia Focile, soprano (Tatyana)
Orchestre de Paris
Semyon Bychkov, conductor

Hamlet, overture-fantasia, Op 67
Philadelphia Orchestra
Riccardo Muti, conductor

Six Romances, Op 73 (No 2, ‘Night’)
Aleksei Martynov, tenor
Aristotel Constantinidi, piano

Produced by Chris Barstow