Live Broadcast-The National Radio Orchestra
Friday, 22 January 2010 , 19.00

I think that every music lover’s dream is the complete Tchaikovsky musical programmme. If entire generations hated the red soviet communist flag that had smothered us for more than half a century with its patriotic and high-flown oppression, Tchaikovsky has got everything we love about Russian music: the feeling of national identity proved through the sap of its artistically decanted folklore, the echoes of prayers redeemed by Orthodox crosses made from head to toe, the passion of the directly expressed feeling, the sorrow of the country boyar saloons, the gloomy foreseen destiny… that implacable fatum coordinated by heavenly bodies and even by something much greater than that , the soul as big as the steppe where you can always find time and place to love, you can find that shift of words which brings tears to your eyes.
What else can one write for the opening of an exhibition, other than trivial and loud words? wondered rhetorically Tchaikovsky in his letter to Nadezhda von Meck. The answer: The Year 1812, Festival overture Op.49.

Valueless and unsingable… the passages are so fragmented, so unskillful, so poorly written that they have no chance of being saved… the work itself is bad, vile, in some fragment it is obvious you have stolen from other composers… only a few pages deserve to be kept… the rest must be thrown away or completely re-written… these are the words of Nikolai Grigoryevich Rubinstein on the Concerto No. 1, Op. 23 in B minor For Piano and Orchestra, after having listened for the first time the concerto (a few days after he had finished it), on January 5th 1875. The answer given by the world: Masterpiece!

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 proved to be one of the most Russian one…half barbaric compositions that were heard all over this town… said the New York Postin 1890, after the first North-American audition of Symphony No. 4 in F minor , Op. 56 in F minor. The composer’s answer: it was his long-life favorite, dedicating it to his best friend, the faithful patroness Nadezhda von Meck.

Join me on Friday evening at 19:00 in a walk in the place where the sleigh has the outline of Tchaikovskyian melody and the driver is the composer himself, his soul as big as the taiga, his eyes wandering through the immensity of his dream…