Tchaikovsky and His World

Rating:
Summary: You'd be sorry to miss this if you like Tchaikovsky
Review: This book is a collection of the finest essays by principally American scholars who have sought to understand Tchaikovsky, contemporary Russian art and culture and the music. Each essay is sophisticated with lots of sources quoted and the book also has good pictures. It is a concise work and as an edition on Tchaikovsky to be treasured, for it succeeds in embellishing the composer at a critical level, without being a eulogy of him or his music.

Of greatest interest are the essays by Poznansky on Tchaikovsky himself. We are treated to the most intimate details of his sexuality (not all this material was destroyed it seems by his brother) though the treatment is unsalacious and full of objectivity if not humour. These facts emerge from previously untranslated or hitherto unreleased material and represent the latest material emerging about his life. Poznansky shows us that homosexuality at the time was not as much a problem as it is supposed to have been, and that people then were more or less as people are now - not less enlightened in any sense. Attitudes on morality may have shifted since then, but there was also that much more discretion on such matters at the time.

Poznansky unravels the mystery surrounding Tchaikovsky's death authoritatively and though conspiracy theories will still abound, I think the matter is laid to rest.

This is also a celebration of Russia and the greatest flowering of its art and culture, not to mention music under Tchaikovsky. We get treated to essays on Russian painting with some fine copies of the works described, the coronation of the Tsar and on writers like Chekov.

This book is also (along with Poznansky's essays), a psychological dissection into roles of gender in history and myth, with one especially good essay "Tchaikovsky Androgyne". There are also some good essays on musical theory.

Expertly edited, this is a study in scholarship, presentation and warm intelligence. Tchaikovsky emerges unscathed and as grand as ever to those who have sought to know him and his muse.

Rating:
Summary: You'd be sorry to miss this if you like Tchaikovsky
Review: This book is a collection of the finest essays by principally American scholars who have sought to understand Tchaikovsky, contemporary Russian art and culture and the music. Each essay is sophisticated with lots of sources quoted and the book also has good pictures. It is a concise work and as an edition on Tchaikovsky to be treasured, for it succeeds in embellishing the composer at a critical level, without being a eulogy of him or his music.

Of greatest interest are the essays by Poznansky on Tchaikovsky himself. We are treated to the most intimate details of his sexuality (not all this material was destroyed it seems by his brother) though the treatment is unsalacious and full of objectivity if not humour. These facts emerge from previously untranslated or hitherto unreleased material and represent the latest material emerging about his life. Poznansky shows us that homosexuality at the time was not as much a problem as it is supposed to have been, and that people then were more or less as people are now - not less enlightened in any sense. Attitudes on morality may have shifted since then, but there was also that much more discretion on such matters at the time.

Poznansky unravels the mystery surrounding Tchaikovsky's death authoritatively and though conspiracy theories will still abound, I think the matter is laid to rest.

This is also a celebration of Russia and the greatest flowering of its art and culture, not to mention music under Tchaikovsky. We get treated to essays on Russian painting with some fine copies of the works described, the coronation of the Tsar and on writers like Chekov.

This book is also (along with Poznansky's essays), a psychological dissection into roles of gender in history and myth, with one especially good essay "Tchaikovsky Androgyne". There are also some good essays on musical theory.

Expertly edited, this is a study in scholarship, presentation and warm intelligence. Tchaikovsky emerges unscathed and as grand as ever to those who have sought to know him and his muse.