Romantic · 1820–1900
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
“The Melody Maker”
Russia's most beloved composer — creator of Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and melodies that break and mend your heart.
The Romantic era (1820–1900): Big emotions, bigger orchestras — music about love, nature, nations and stormy hearts.
Amazing facts
- He trained as a lawyer and worked as a government clerk before daring, at 22, to enrol in the brand-new St Petersburg Conservatory.
- His three ballets — Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker — are the most performed ballets on Earth.
- Swan Lake flopped at its 1877 premiere with clumsy staging; today it's the most famous ballet in the world.
- For 13 years a wealthy widow, Nadezhda von Meck, paid him a generous allowance on one strange condition: they must never meet.
- The Nutcracker features the celesta, a magical bell-like keyboard he discovered in Paris and smuggled into Russia so no rival could use it first.
- He conducted at the grand opening concert of New York's Carnegie Hall in 1891 — and wrote home amazed at American skyscrapers and hospitality.
A few pieces to start with
Swan Lake
1877
Ballet
A prince, a swan-princess under a sorcerer's spell, and the most famous melody in ballet — a mournful oboe over shimmering strings.
The Nutcracker
1892
Ballet
A Christmas Eve adventure with a Mouse King, a journey to the Land of Sweets, and the twinkling celesta of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
1812 Overture
1880
Orchestral
Celebrates Russia's defeat of Napoleon — scored with church bells and real cannon fire. Outdoor performances still use actual cannons!
Life & times — what was happening in the world
1840Born in Votkinsk, Russia, where his father managed an ironworks.
1861Tsar Alexander II frees Russia's serfs — the year before Tchaikovsky enters the conservatory.
1862Quits his job as a legal clerk to join the first class of the St Petersburg Conservatory.
1869The Suez Canal opens; Tolstoy finishes War and Peace.
1875Piano Concerto No. 1 premieres — in Boston, USA, after a Russian colleague called it unplayable.
1876Bell patents the telephone; Wagner opens his Bayreuth festival.
1877Swan Lake premieres in Moscow; his mysterious patroness Mme von Meck begins her support.
1883Krakatoa erupts, the loudest sound in recorded history.
1888Tours Europe conducting his own works; meets Brahms, Grieg and Dvořák.
1891Conducts at the opening of Carnegie Hall in New York.
1891Work begins on the Trans-Siberian Railway across Tchaikovsky's homeland.
1892The Nutcracker premieres in St Petersburg.
1893Premieres his heart-rending Sixth Symphony, the 'Pathétique' — and dies nine days later, aged 53.