David Brown

Yet Dr. Brown observes, it is during this period that Tchaikovsky is perhaps at his most exposed: in his responses to ordinary situations we can most clearly see his idiosyncrasies and rapidly changing moods, his likes and dislikes, his kindness and compassion, his openhanded generosity and calculating deviousness, his gentle but constant envy of those whose sexual nature permitted them the experience of normal family life. Musically, these were the years of The Maid of Orléans and Mazepa, the second piano concerto, the three orchestral suites, the piano trio, the Italian Capriccio and the Manfred symphony. Once again a most valuable feature of this critical biography is Dr. Brown's detailed exposition and analysis of each of the new compositions. And on the human side the book is wholly absorbing. Once again, too, Dr. Brown has been able to draw upon the fullest text ever published of some of Tchaikovsky's particularly revealing letters, suppressed before publication in the Soviet Union but recently smuggled out of Russia.

In the opening chapters he approaches the central crisis of his whole existence: his marriage to Antonina Milyukova. The marriage was a desperate gesture, a hopeless attempt to balance, or at least disguise, his strongly homosexual nature. But only five days after the wedding he wrote to his brother Anatoly, "Physically my wife has become totally repugnant to me." David Brown has had access to some of Tchaikovsky's most revealing letters; they were printed in Russia in 1940, but suppressed before publication, and in 1979, one of the few surviving copies was smuggled out of the country. Dr. Brown also provides a fascinating picture of the composer's long and strange relationship with his benefactress, Mrs. von Meck. By mutual agreement, they never met, yet their friendship produced a prodigious and often passionately expressed correspondence. This was the period of some of Tchaikovsky's masterpieces: the first piano concerto, Swan Lake, the fourth symphony, Eugene Onegin, Francesca de Rimini, and the violin concerto. The book is at least as important a contribution to musical scholarship as to biography. As biography, it is steadily absorbing in its portrayal of a man and an artist striving to keep the creative spark alive, often overcome by melancholy, fleeing from one part of Europe to another, but always breaking through to new triumphs. Unquestionably, this is going to be the definitive work on Tchaikovsky in English for many years to come.