Tchaikovsky and Nadezhda von Meck – An Unusual Friendship

The name Nadezhda von Meck may not be familiar to many but without this wealthy widow’s generosity some of the finest classical music of all time may never have been written. Here, Caroline Baker explains Nadezhda von Meck and Tchaikovsky’s relationship.

Nadezhda von Meck.

Following the death of her rich and successful husband in 1876, forty-five year old businesswoman Nadezhda van Meck became a social recluse and even refused to attend her own children’s weddings. Her passionate love of music was her only source of joy. Although she had, in essence, removed herself from society, she continued to clandestinely attend her beloved concerts, ensuring that she sat far apart from the rest of the audience.

Finding herself with a surplus of income, and keen to put it to good use, Nadezhda offered ongoing financial support to a composer named Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky whose music she greatly admired.  This annual allowance enabled him to resign from his day job to focus full-time on his beloved music.

Pyotr, an incredibly talented young musician, was a lonely and troubled soul. His parents had forced him to attend boarding school at the age of ten; an experience that he found traumatic and never fully recovered from. He found it painfully hard to be separated from his mother, and her death when he was only fourteen years old devastated him.

Oddly, Nadezhda stipulated that her role as benefactor was conditional on them never meeting. They did, however, correspond by letter and this relationship provided great emotional support and encouragement to Pyotr. Over a thousand letters were exchanged between them over a thirteen-year period. Pyotr even described her as “his best friend”.  Although they never officially met one another, they did catch sight of each other on occasion and it is reported that they even physically bumped into each other one day during a walk. Even then they did not interact with each other.

When her son Nikolai married Pyotr’s niece Anna, Nadezhda did not attend the wedding; adamant that they should not alter the status of their friendship.

End of the friendship

The relationship came to an abrupt end in 1890 when Nadezhda regretfully informed the composer that she would no longer be able to support him. She paid him a year’s allowance in advance with the understanding that there would be no more payments and no more contact. The true reasons for this were not disclosed to Pyotr, but by this time he was a successful composer and no longer needed the financial support that his patron had provided him with.  The sudden loss of the emotional support, however, upset him greatly and he persisted in writing to her. Regrettably the letters were returned to him unopened.

Historians suggest that Nadezhda’s children had long been unhappy about the increasingly intense relationship that had developed between their mother and the composer, not least due to the rumors of Pyotr’s homosexuality. Squabbles within the family regarding money were also identified as a possible reason for the sudden cessation of the patronage. There were also reports that Nadezhda was suffering from atrophy of her arm which would have made writing letters difficult. Due to the intimate nature of their correspondence, it is unlikely that she would have felt comfortable dictating them to another person.

Death

Pyotr sadly died only three years after the relationship ended. His official cause of death was listed as cholera but there were rumours at the time that it may have been a suicide.  He was only fifty-three. Nadezhda died only a few months later from tuberculosis at the age of sixty-two.

Thanks to Nadezhda von Meck’s financial and emotional support, Pyotr’s outstanding musical accomplishments of 169 pieces including ballets, symphonies, operas and concertos, have resulted in him becoming one of the world’s most famous composers of all time. Some of his greatest works, including Swan Lake, The Nutcracker Suite and the 1812 Overture are recognised and loved all over the world.

In Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s final letter to Nadezhda he wrote:

“..you probably yourself do not suspect the full immensity of your good deed!”

What do you think of the relationship between Tchaikovsky and Nadezhda von Meck? Let us know below.

Sources

https://www.californiasymphony.org/composer/tchaikovsky/the-woman-behind-tchaikovsky/

Holden, A (1995) Tchaikovsky: A Biography. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-679-420064

https://www.mfiles.co.uk/composers/Peter-Ilyich-Tchaikovsky.htm

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/oct/21/tchaikovsky-where-to-start-with-his-music

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadezhda_von_Meck

The Death of Violinist Igor Oistrakh - A Great Loss to Classical Music

The Ukrainian violinist Igor Davidovich Oistrakh, who died in August 2021, was one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. Born in Odessa in 1931 to the pianist Tamara Rotaryova and violinist David Fyodorovich Oistrakh (Eustrach), he belonged to a family of violinists regarded as some of the finest in the history of the instrument. His father is also regarded as one of the top two or three masters of the instrument of all time. Eugenia Russell explains.

Image above: Igor Oistrakh (right) in 1957. He is with his father David (left) and conductor Franz Konwitschny. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-45930-0004 / Zimontkowski / CC-BY-SA 3.0, available here.

David Oistrakh, was the son of a Jewish merchant and amateur violinist. The Oistrakhs were merchants of the second guild, the middle guild in Russia whose scope was limited to domestic trade. As well as restrictions on movement, Jews had to pay an additional tax and a fee appropriate to their guild. Music was one of the few other professions open to Jews in Soviet Russia and David’s father had given him a tiny violin as a small child to get him started. David’s burgeoning talent meant he was able to support his family for several years as an itinerant violinist before he started gaining recognition. During his later career he established close friendships with other musicians of Jewish descent such as Isaac Stern and Nathan Milstein, as well as the poet Iosif Brodsky and Victor Hochhauser, who became the impresario for David and Igor, introducing them to western audiences.

Father and son shared the same teacher, Pyotr Stolyarsky, founder of the Odessa School of violin playing, who fostered a deep love of music in them. In addition to his formal training at the Central Music School in Moscow, after which he made his first public performance in 1948, and at the Moscow Conservatory (1949-55) Igor received invaluable tuition from his father whenever he found the time. In 1952, Igor won the International Wieniawski competition in Poland, and this opened up opportunities for giving concerts outside of the Soviet bloc. In 1953, he gave his first concert in the West in London, delighting his audience with the performances of concertos by Beethoven and Khachaturian that would establish him as a soloist in his own right. The Oistrakhs were not limited to the violin, they were also gifted viola players and conductors, and often Igor performed under the baton of his father. David and Igor championed several works by composers who wrote idiomatically for the violin and naturally, many Russian composers. The family collaborations in different combinations spanned three generations with the inclusion of Igor’s son Valery (Valerio). For example, Igor played violin and David the viola in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante and amongst their collaborations on two violins were Henryk Wieniawski’s Études-caprices, Pablo de Sarasate’s Navarra, Eugène Ysaÿ’s Poème, and Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two Violins.

King David and Prince Igor

When playing together, David and Igor complemented each other, each bringing their musicianship to the fore. Igor, known as Garik to his friends, was noted for his cool, modernist approach to performance: always controlled and never over-emotional. His playing is characterized by precision and clarity. By contrast, his father David, noted for the richness of his tone, has been described as ‘seraphic’. Though Igor had a different approach from his father on the concert platform the pair had to forge a common path in Stalin’s Soviet Union in order to navigate the world stage. They achieved that goal together, becoming known to music lovers as ‘King David and Prince Igor’.

Igor particularly shone in the Bach Double Violin Concerto, which he had begun playing with his father in 1947, performed by the pair in London and Manchester in 1961. They recorded the work several times, most notably in 1959 in Moscow (Moscow Chamber Orchestra/Rudolf Barshai) and for Deutsche Grammophon the same year along with the Vivaldi double violin concerto. Igor repeated the feat with Valery at the Barbican Centre to mark the 50th anniversary of his London debut. Igor and Valery have performed Bach’s triple violin concerto with Yehudi Menuhin, and Igor further collaborated with Menuhin on Bartok’s Duo for two violins. On three occasions Igor attended the music festival founded by the great Catalan cellist Pablo Casals in Prades in the French Pyrenees – and in 1950 appearing alongside him. One of his greatest accomplishments was the recording of the complete Mozart and Beethoven Sonatas for violin and piano accompanied by his wife, Natalia Zertsalova.

Igor pursued a vocation as a teacher alongside his career as a concert artist, beginning as his father’s assistant at the Moscow Conservatoire where he eventually became a professor. After the fall of the USSR he moved to Brussels where he became professor at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in 1996.

Soviet era challenges

The Oistrakh family’s Jewish roots were to influence the delicate artistic balance they had to strike living under Communist rule. During the tense atmosphere of the Cold War, while pursuing their musical ambitions - playing some cutting edge music and becoming famous in the west – they had to appease the Union of Soviet Composers and its General Secretary, Tikhon Khrennikov, favored by Stalin. Khrennikov was a known opponent of ‘rootless cosmopolitans’, and especially intellectual Jews. Notwithstanding the many challenges, the Oistrakhs remained loyal to their country and did not defect to the West like many other Soviet-era musicians. In 1994, Igor collaborated with several other musicians including Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Gidon Kremer on a documentary about his father’s life that reveals much of the ‘unspoken private suffering’ of their life and times.

What do you think of the death of Igor Oistrakh? Let us know below.