Tchaikovsky and the Holidays

I’m back from my holiday sojourns to Texas and New York, and notwithstanding travel delays and bad weather (including turbulence on the runway in Dallas), I had a great time. I wish I had a video of my one-year-old niece Audrey saying “Baaa?” (that’s “bottle” in baby-talk) then grabbing an empty beer bottle and putting it in her mouth.

Since I really have no idea what I’m doing with this blogging thing, for Christmas I asked for “The Huffington Post’s Complete Guide to Blogging.” And I got it, from my computer-savvy brother-in-law. I also got some really great Steve Madden shoes. Mmm… shoes.

In keeping with La Ariana’s sage advice on blogging, here’s a short post, not-very-well-written-or-edited, that incorporates visuals.

In Fort Worth, my sister, 5-year-old niece, and I attended a performance of The Nutcracker, along with another 5-year-old and her mother. I hadn’t seen the ballet since I was a child, and I’ve never played it (just the orchestral suite), so I was really jazzed. They used recorded music, which was disappointing, but I got used to the tinny sound after a while.

Maybe it was being surrounded by children, but the performance really took me back to my childhood love of Tchaikovsky. When I was a boy, I would listen to The Nutcracker for hours, lying on my bed, letting my mind fill with the images conjured by the music. Later, I got into the 1812 Overture and Marche Slave, and eventually the symphonies.

At some point, though, I began to turn off Tchaikovsky. I still enjoyed playing his music (the viola parts are very satisfying, and challenging) but I didn’t really enjoy listening to his work, live or recorded. Shortly after joining the SLO Symphony, I had a conversation with Mike Nowak about Tchaikovsky. He’s not a huge fan either – doesn’t program the symphonies – even though Tchaikovsky is a crowd-pleaser. That made me feel a little better.

Now, when I decided to do this blog, I knew I wouldn’t pretend to be a musicologist, but I’ve been reflecting on Tchaikovsky lately and thought I’d share some of these thoughts.

What’s the appeal of Tchaikovsky? The melodies, first of all, are immediately attractive. They’re memorable, too, because they are based on scales and arpeggios, and they get repeated a lot. His work is not cerebral or abstract – it appeals first to the emotions, which, I daresay, is how most people experience music. The emotions evoked are fairly straightforward:

Heroism (1812 Overture)
Heartbreak (4^th movement of Symphony #6)
Joyful exuberance (last movement of the Serenade for Strings)

I think Tchaikovsky would have made a terrific film composer. To this day, as when I was a little boy, his work conjures mental images. Perhaps this is why (in my view) his most successful works are the ballets – his talent found fullest expression when he was composing music with images in mind.

I feel the symphonies and his other “absolute” music suffers in comparison with his ballets, and when compared with other masters of absolute music, like Bach, Beethoven, or Brahms. But maybe this is an apples and oranges issue.

Here’s a little bit of Nutcracker:

I guess for me, Tchaikovsky was a sort of “starter” composer. He paved the way for my later appreciation of guys like Brahms, Mahler, and Shostakovich.

I guess it’s normal to grow in and out of music. After all, in junior high, this was my favorite song:

Best,

DH

P.S. Stay tuned for reviews of Stomp and Spring Awakening, and “C is for Conductors.”

P.S. Why was the violist not allowed to carry his viola on the airplane?

No hazardous materials allowed on board.