Tag Archive: 0Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The most famous musical response to Napoleon’s defeat in Russia in December 1812 is, quite rightly, Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’.  That was composed almost seventy years after the event, but there was also music written at the time to celebrate the Russian victory. This is A military song in honour of General Count Wittgenstein dedicated to […]

Tchaikovsky was rather pleased with this, his first suite for orchestra (1879).  He wrote to his publisher, Pyotr Jurgenson: ‘Unless I am very much mistaken, it should have a success that will spread rapidly.’  He was obviously still pleased with it some years later, deeming it good enough as a present for none other than the great French […]

This is the first edition of the full score of Tchaikovsky’s cantata Moskva (‘Moscow’), with its shimmering chromolithograph title, written for the coronation of Tsar Alexander III.  Although passed by the censor for printing in May 1883 when the coronation took place, it was not published until five years later.  Writing to his publisher Pyotr Jurgenson in […]