(1845-1930)
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"In my mind's eyes I see once more the great figures of those days. There is Tchaikovsky, with the personality and manners of a French marquis of the eighteenth century; but very modes, with a modesty which could not be mistaken for a pose. He was too intelligent ever to attempt playing a part among his artistic comrades, to whom, incidentally, he was always most cordial . . . Tchaikovsky was excessively sensitive; modest and unassertive in his dealings with all, he was deeply appreciative of any interest shown in him or in his works." (Brown 182). | |
Walter Damrosch (1862-1950)
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"In the spring of 1891 Carnegie Hall, which had been built by Andrew Carnegie as a home for the higher musical activities of New York, was inaugurated with music festival in which the New York Symphony and Oratorio Societies took part. In order to give this festival a special significance, I invited Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky [sic], the great Russian composer, to come to America and to conduct some of his own works. In all my many years of experience I have never met a great composer so gentle, so modest - almost diffident - as he. We all loved him from the first moment - my wife and I, the chorus, the orchestra, the employees of the hotel where he lived, and of course the public . . . He came often to our house, and, I think, like to come. He was always gentle in his intercourse with others, but a feeling of sadness seemed never to leave him, although his reception in America was more than enthusiastic and the visit so successful in every away that he made plans to come back the following year. Yet he was often swept by uncontrollable waves of melancholia and despondency." (Brown 183) | |
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Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
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"An elderly gentleman, very likeable, with great manners, who seems quite rich and reminds me somehow of Mihalovich [a Hungarian composer and educationist]." (Brown 184) | |
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Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)
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Of all the composer I have known the most delightful as personality was Tchaikovsky, between whom and myself a relation now sprang up that surely would have ripened into close friendship had circumstances favored us; so large minded was he, that I think he would have put up unresentingly with all I had to give his work - a very relative admiration. Accustomed to the uncouth, almost brutal manners affected by many German musicians as part of the make up and one of the symptoms of genius, it was relief to find in this Russian, whom even the rough diamonds allowed was a master n his own lines, a polished, cultivated gentleman and man of the world. Even his detestation of Brahms's music failed to check my sympathy - and that I think is strong testimony to his charm! He would argue with me about Brahms by the hour, strum passages on the piano and ask if they were not hideous, declaring I must be under hypnotic influence, since to admire this awkward pedant did not square with what he was kind enough to call the soundness of my instinct on other points. Another thing that puzzled him was my devotion to Marc [her dog], of whom he was secretly terrified, but this trait he considered to be a form of English spleen and it puzzled him less than the other madness. For years I have meant to inquire whether dogs play no part in the Russian scheme of life or whether Tchaikovsky's views were peculiar to himself; anyhow it amused me, reading his Memoirs, to find Marco and Brahms bracketed together as eccentricities of his young English friend. On one point we were of one mind, the neglect in my school . . . of colour. 'Not one of them can instrumentate,' he said, and he earnestly begged me to turn my attention at once to the orchestra and not be prudish about using the medium for all it is worth. 'What happens,' he asked, 'in ordinary conversation? If you have to do with really alive people, listen to the inflections in the voices . . . there's instrumentation for you!' And I follow his advise on the spot, went to concerts with the sole object of studying orchestral effects, filled notebooks upon notebooks with impressions, and ever since have been at least as much interested in sounds as in sense, considering the two things indivisible. (Brown 190) | |
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Back: Impressions Credit: taken from David Brown's Tchaikovsky Remembered |
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1998-9 by Gretchen Lamb |