Tchaikovsky: A Biography

Best known for his first piano concerto, his music for the ballet Swan Lake, and the opera The Queen of Spades, Tchaikovsky also wrote passionate songs, haunting chamber music, and lyrical orchestral scores. After years of critical neglect, during which he was written off as "too popular", he is now hailed as one of our greatest melodists and orchestrators. With the gradual opening of archives in post-Soviet Russia, there has been a concomitant resurgence of interest in the facts of his life - and his mysterious death. The product of three years' research in archives in Russia, Europe, and the United States, Mr. Holden's biography will stand for many years as a definitive reinterpretation of a life and career as colorful, as passionate, and ultimately as moving as Tchaikovsky's music.