Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote “Swan Lake”, “The Nutcracker” and “The Sleeping Beauty” — three ballets that have become a byword for classical ballet itself. In his lifetime they were not always prized.
He was born in Votkinsk in 1840. A civil servant first, then the St Petersburg Conservatory, then a professorship in Moscow. The first performance of “Swan Lake”, in 1877, was a failure.
There was the correspondence with Nadezhda von Meck — the patroness who supported him financially for nine years on condition that they never meet in person. An unhappy marriage. Sufferings that found their outlet in the music.
The First Symphony, “Winter Daydreams”; the First Piano Concerto; the Fifth and Sixth (“Pathétique”) symphonies; the operas “Eugene Onegin” and “The Queen of Spades”.
He died in 1893, nine days after the premiere of the “Pathétique” — of cholera, it is presumed.