Tchaikovsky: A Biography

by Alan Kendall

258 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Philippe · Rating 2 out of 5]

If one would feed David Brown’s monumental 4-volume Tchaikovksy biography to an AI-powered computer with the instruction to pare it down to a moderately-sized single volume, a book such as this would probably be the result. It’s one of those humdrum biographies that feels machinic and uninvolving. The contours of the life are somewhat in evidence, of course. But the substance seems to be missing. There is a lot of frantic traveling going on here, and luncheons and premieres. But to learn something more fundamental about Tchaikovsky as a person and an artist, we will have to turn elsewhere (to Taruskin, maybe). The flotsam of daily life whirls around three gaping holes. Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality is by now an accepted fact. But Kendall’s biographic account prompts questions about the precise nature of that sexuality. Tchaikovsky’s appetite for adolescent youth is troubling indeed. And even more so if one connects the dots between his relationships with young men and their subsequent death by their own hand (I’m alluding to the fates of men such as Edouard Zak, Ivan Verinovsky, Vladimir Sklifosovsky and, of course, his beloved nephew Vladimir Davidov (‘Bob’)). However, additional googling does not in any way suggest that Tchaikovsky was a sexual predator. Then there is the mysterious, somewhat vexing relationship with Nadezhda von Meck who bankrolled the composer, intermittently drew him physically near in comfortable quarters on her estates but never allowed him an actual meeting. Late in his life she abruptly withdrew her financial support and the motives behind this move are unclear. And finally the supreme mystery of Tchaikovsky’s death. Cholera, suicide, or both? Kendall wrote his book relatively soon after Alexandra Orlova published her account of the composer’s death which holds that a homosexual affair with a member of the aristocracy led him to be sentenced to a forced suicide by a court of honor. This theory has been disproven by other sources and I understand that opinions continue to remain divided on the matter. All in all this indifferently written book conveys a rather unsympathetic picture of what was undoubtedly a very complex and tormented personality.