Tchaikovsky
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Brussels

Brussels (Brussel, Bruxelles), is the capital city of Belgium.

Tchaikovsky is only known to have visited Brussels twice:

• 20 July/1 August 1861 — a brief stop while travelling from Antwerp to Ostend on his first journey outside Russia.
• 28 December 1892/9 January 1893–3/15 January 1893 — in order to rehearse and conduct a concert of his own works (2/14 January 1893), which included the Suite No. 3, the Piano Concerto No. 1 (soloist Franz Rummel), the suite from The Nutcracker, the Serenade for String Orchestra, and the overture The Year 1812. "The orchestra performed well, if not very well," he wrote afterwards, "but it showed little discipline. Everyone there received me very cordially and kindly, but this did not make it any easier for me, so that in Brussels I suffered doubly from agitation and melancholy" [1]. This concert was all the more memorable for the composer because during the interval François-Auguste Gevaert delivered a speech thanking him on behalf of the Brussels Association of Musicians to which Tchaikovsky had donated his conducting fee. Back in 1865, while still a student, Tchaikovsky had translated Gevaert's famous Traité d'instrumentation, which was published by Jurgenson the following year as Handbook for Instrumentation (TH 329)

Notes:

1. Letter 4844 to Modest Tchaikovsky, 4/16 January 1893 [back]