Tchaikovsky
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Clarens

Clarens is a small village in the municipality of Montreux, in the canton of Vaud, in Switzerland.

Tchaikovsky stayed at Clarens on three occasions:

• 10/22 October–1/13 November 1877 — immediately after the end of his marriage to Antonina Miliukova, he stayed with his brother Anatolii at the Villa Richelieu, and within a week of arriving his state of health had improved sufficiently to allow him to complete the orchestration and piano arrangement of Act I of Evgenii Onegin.
• 25 February/9 March–5/17 April 1878 — accompanied by his brother Modest, Nikolai Konradi, and Aleksei Sofronov; after initially working on his Twelve Pieces (Op. 40) and the Grand Sonata, the arrival of his violinist friend Iosif Kotek inspired him to begin a Violin Concerto on 5/17 March, and he worked so rapidly that by 30 March/11 April the whole concerto was complete and fully orchestrated.
• 30 December 1878/11 January 1879–4/16 February 1879 — this time his stay at the Villa Richelieu was spent almost exclusively working on the opera The Maid of Orleans (except for a day trip to Geneva on 17/29 January).