Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky | Autograph letter signed to Hans von Bülow, 1/13 February 1876

Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky

Autograph letter signed ("P. Tschaikovsky"), in French, to Hans von Bülow, ABOUT RUBINSTEIN'S CONTEMPT FOR HIS COMPOSITIONS

informing him that he has just returned to Moscow from Switzerland, thanking him for his letter of 13 January in which he related another American success which he owes to him (CONCERNING HIS STRING QUARTET NO.2, OP.22), expressing his warmest thanks and joy for the great advances in the dissemination of his music on account of his championing of it, finding it strange that of the two most famous contemporary performers, himself [Bülow] and Anton Rubinstein, only the former has been supportive, even though Rubinstein was his former master, confessing that Rubinstein ("This Olympian God") has only ever demonstrated a regal contempt for his compositions, admitting that he has always been deeply hurt by this, illustrating the depth of Rubinstein's contempt by relating the story of the publisher Bessel's humiliating refusal to publish his string quartet [op.22] as a result of Rubinstein's dismissal of the work's value; in the closing section of the letter Tchaikovsky tells Bülow that he is in possession of an entry pass for Bayreuth and that he is nursing hopes of seeing him there, signing himself his devoted and grateful admirer

...Ce Dieu olympien n'a jamais témoigné vis à vis de mes compositions, qu'un souverain mépris et je V[ou]s dirai sous le sceau de la confession que j'en ai toujours été profondément blessé. Laissez moi, à propos du quatuor dont V[ou]s m'annoncez le succès, V[ou]s conter un petit détail qui va V[ou]s faire comprendre combien est grand ce mepris. Quand, il ya quelques années, je me suis adressé a l'éditeur Bessel (de Petersbourg) en lui proposant gratis l'édition de ce quatuor, il se rendit chez R[oubinstein] pour apprendre de lui si cette composition en valait la peine. "Non", répondit décidément mon ancien maître, et là-dessu Bessel m'envoie un refus des plus formels et des plus humiliants...

4 pages, small 8vo (16.4 x 10.4cm), later pencil annotation to upper left-hand corner of first page ("135"), Moscow, 1 February (new style: 13 February) 1876

A CELEBRATED LETTER FROM TCHAIKOVSKY TO HIS GREAT MUSICAL CHAMPION, HANS VON BÜLOW.

Hans von Bülow (1830-1894), sometime son-in-law of Franz Liszt, and the premier piano virtuoso of the day, was the dedicatee of one of Tchaikovsky's most popular works, the Piano Concerto no.1 in B flat minor (1874-1875). It was Bülow, whose intellectual and passionate style of playing had impressed Tchaikovsky when he heard him play in Moscow in 1874, who gave the world premiere of the work in Boston in October 1875, during the course of a taxing and highly remunerative six-month concert tour of America.

Tchaikovsky's relationship with Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894) was more complex. One of the great nineteenth-century keyboard virtuosos, Rubinstein had been Tchaikovsky's composition teacher at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, which he had founded in 1862, although he had been unwilling to acknowledge his pupil's superior creative gifts. His negative views concerning Tchaikovsky's second string quartet, written between December 1873 and January 1874, date from his hearing of the work at a private performance in the apartment of his brother Nikolai. In later years Rubinstein would express himself more moderately with regard to the music of 'the former law student Tchaikovsky'.

The Bayreuth performances mentioned by Tchaikovsky towards the end of his letter were those of the first Bayreuth Festival, which took place in the summer of 1876, and which saw the premiere of the complete four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. While Tchaikovsky did indeed attend this epoch-making production, his globe-trotting correspondent in the event did not.

The autograph diverges in a number of minor details from the text of the letter on the online Tchaikovsky Research website (no.443).

PROVENANCE:

Formerly in the legendary collection of Louis Koch (no.322).

LITERATURE:

Marie von Bülow, ed., Hans von Bülow. Ausgewählte Schriften 1850-1892, v (1904), pp.297-298; Dr. Georg Kinsky, Manuskripte - Briefe - Dokumente von Scarlatti bis Stravinsky. Katalog der Musikautographen-Sammlung Louis Koch (Stuttgart, 1953), pp.301-302; R. Allen Lott, ' "A Continuous Trance": Hans von Bülow's Tour of America', The Journal of Musicology , vol. 12 no. 4 (1994), pp. 529-549