Letter 455a
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Russian text (original)
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English translation
Copyright © 2010 by Luis Sundkvist
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| Сергей Иванович! |
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Sergei Ivanovich! |
| 1) Симфония моя не получена ещё. |
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1) My symphony [No. 3 ?] hasn't been
received yet. |
| 2) Вечером в консерватории будет спектакль, на
котором мне бы очень хотелось быть. По этим двум причинам не отложить
ли наш музыкальный вечер до понедельника? Если Вы найдёте это возможным,
то потрудитесь уведомить Фёдора
Ивановича. В понедельник в 8 часов буду Вас ожидать. |
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2) This evening at the Conservatory there is a performance
which I would very much like to attend [2]. For these two reasons, could
we not postpone our musical soirée until Monday? If you think this
is possible, then be so kind as to inform Fedor Ivanovich. I
shall expect you on Monday at 8 o'clock. |
| П. Чайковский |
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P. Tchaikovsky |
| Не придёте ли и Вы на консерваторский спектакль? |
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Wouldn't you also like to come to the Conservatory
performance? |
Notes:
- This brief letter to Taneev, which bears no date,
was dated to 1886 in П. И. Чайковский. С. И. Танеев. Письма (1951), p. 137, because
Vladimir Zhdanov, who was responsible for this edition, assumed that Tchaikovsky
was referring to the proofs of his Manfred symphony,
which was being printed by Jurgenson
in the spring of 1886. The editors of П. И. Чайковский. Полное собрание сочинений, том XVII (1981),
however, pointed out that 1876 was the more likely year of this letter and
were even able to propose a precise date for it on the following grounds:
"Tchaikovsky began corresponding with Taneev in 1874; this letter
was written in Moscow during the
period in which he was in regular contact with Taneev and the Maslovs, evidently
before the autumn of 1877, when Tchaikovsky left Moscow for a long time. The student
performances at the Moscow Conservatory
took place in March, and in both 1876 and 1877 on Saturdays. In 1877 Tchaikovsky
was not occupied with any symphony at the start of the year. The most likely
year is therefore 1876. On 24 January/5 February 1876 the Third Symphony had
been performed in Saint Petersburg,
and the [handwritten copies of the] score and parts may possibly have remained
there for a while. This was a new work which had been performed only once
in Moscow (on 7/19 November 1875),
and so the 'musical soirée' referred to in the letter may well have been
organized by Tchaikovsky in order to acquaint his friends with the symphony
once the score arrived from
Saint Petersburg. On 20 March/1 April 1876 there was a student performance
at the Moscow Conservatory which
would have interested Tchaikovsky greatly: a staging of Carl Maria von Weber's Der
Freischütz, an opera of which he had been fond ever since his childhood.
The soirée would, naturally, have been put off until another day" (op.
cit., p. 223) [back]
- Weber's
Romantic opera Der Freischütz was staged at the Malyi Theatre on
20 March/1 April 1876 with a cast drawn from students of the Moscow Conservatory, and under the
baton of Nikolai Rubinstein.
On 17/29 March Tchaikovsky had attended the dress rehearsal and was very
pleased with the quality of the singers (see letter
453 to Anatolii Tchaikovsky,
17/29 March 1876). This may have prompted him to wish to hear the full performance
— note in П. И. Чайковский. Полное собрание сочинений, том XVII (1981),
p. 223 [back]
This page was last updated
on 26 February 2012
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