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Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky remains the most popular Russian composer, more than a century after his death. Tchaikovsky was born in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia, to a Ukrainian mining engineer and his second wife, a woman of French ancestry. Musically gifted, he began piano lessons at the age of five. He went on to study law at the St. Petersburg Conservatory from 1861–1865. There his teachers included Russian composer and pianist Anton Rubinstein, from whom Tchaikovsky later took advanced instruction in orchestration. In 1866, he was selected as professor of theory and harmony at the Moscow Conservatory, that year. He held the position until approximately 1878. Tchaikovsky is perhaps most well known for his ballets, although it was only in his last years, with his two last ballets, that his generation came to really appreciate his qualities as ballet music composer . As an exceptionally gifted orchestrator, his ballet scores in particular contain many striking effects of orchestral shadow. Tchaikovsky's first ballet, Swan Lake, was composed during 1875 and 1876, and first performed at the Bolshoi in Moscow in 1877.
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Artist Biography - Tchaikovsky
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 Sleeping Beauty was considered to be Tchaikovsky's best ballet. It was written some 13 years later in 1888 and 1889, with its first performance in 1890 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. Composed in close collaboration with choreographer Marius Petipa, they represent almost the first use of serious dramatic music for the dance since the operatic ballet of German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck. Tchaikovsky also extended the range of the symphonic poem, and his works in this genre, including Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, are notable for their richly melodic evocation of the moods of the literary works on which they are based.Tchaikovsky himself was less satisified with his last ballet, The Nutcracker, which was composed in 1891 and 1892. Tchaikovsky also wrote ten operas, including Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, between 1877 and 1888.
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For more information , enjoy the official homepage of Tchaikovsky
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