10 things you didn’t know about…

Tchaikovsky

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Tchaikovsky studied law for nine years before deciding on a career in music.

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Nadezhda von Meck was Tchaikovsky’s most generous patron, supporting him over 14 years.

He never actually met her.

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The Russian suffered from debilitating depression his entire life.

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One of Tchaikovsky’s most famous and enduring works, the 1812 Overture, was composed in just one week.

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Tchaikovsky almost binned the score to his First Piano Concerto after Nikolai Rubinstein called it ‘fragmented, so clumsy, so badly written’ and ‘beyond rescue’.

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For years, it was thought Tchaikovsky died of cholera from contaminated

water, but the theory today is that he committed suicide by

taking arsenic after being caught in

flagrante with the nephew of a high-ranking

official.

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Tchaikovsky was from a large family – he had four brothers and one sister.

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Walt Disney controversially trademarked the name ‘Princess

Aurora’, the lead character in Tchaikovsky’s ballet Sleeping

Beauty and Disney’s cartoon of the same name. To add insult to

injury, Disney used large swathes of Tchaikovsky’s music in its

1959 cartoon.

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Tchaikovsky supplemented

his income with work as a music

critic. Schumann’s orchestration skills were

a target of his invective, an opinion which puzzlingly

still sticks today.www.colstonhall.org/classical

The composer was convinced his head would fall off while he was conducting, and would often hold it up with one hand while directing the orchestra with the other.

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