A Russian composer celebrated for his ballets, symphonies and piano works.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky trained first for a career in the civil service before committing to music and enrolling at the new St Petersburg Conservatory. He became one of the first Russian composers to win lasting fame across Europe and beyond, celebrated for a gift of melody as generous as any in the whole repertoire. He later taught at the Moscow Conservatory and lived to see his music adored in his own lifetime.
He is best known for his ballets — Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker — and for his symphonies and concertos, but he also wrote a good deal for solo piano. The collection The Seasons gathers twelve short character pieces, one for each month of the year, and reflects the warmth and directness that make his larger works so loved.
For a learner, Tchaikovsky wrote one of the treasures of the teaching repertoire: the Album for the Young, two dozen short pieces for children that are musical far beyond their modest difficulty. Several movements of The Seasons are within an intermediate player’s reach, giving a gentle way into a great melodist’s world.