P. I. Chaykovsky—N. F. fon Mekk: Perepiska ed. by P. E. Vaydman (review)

It is no wonder that Pyotr Il′ich Tchaikovsky’s correspondence with Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck has been so repeatedly and extensively mined by critics and biographers. Containing details of his daily life with his family and friends, impressions of his extensive travels in Europe (especially in the crisis years after his fateful marriage in 1877), commentary on his own compositions and aesthetics, and his views on other musicians (as well as on writers and artists), the letters have always been central to accounts of the composer’s life and works. Modest Tchaikovsky drew on them extensively in his documentary account of his brother’s life (Zhizn′Petra Il′icha Chaykovskogo: Po dokumentam, khranyashchimsya v arkhive imeni pokoynogo kompozitora v Klinu, 3 vols. (Moscow, 1901–3)), from where they rapidly passed into German and English (Das Leben Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowskys, trans. Paul Juon, 2 vols. (Moscow and Leipzig, 1901–3); Modeste Tchaikovsky, The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, ed. and trans. Rosa Newmarch (London and New York, 1906)). Indeed, Rosa Newmarch felt that the letters’ importance was such that she spared them the kind of radical condensation and cutting that characterized her otherwise heavily edited version of Modest’s monumental work: ‘The most romantic episode of Tchaikovsky’s life—his friendship extending over thirteen years with a woman to whom he never addressed a direct personal greeting—is told in a series of intimate letters. In these I have spared all but the most necessary abridgements’ (The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, p. x).

It was not, however, until the early 1930s that a team of Soviet archivists published the extant correspondence in its entirety for the first time (P. I. Chaykovsky, Perepiska s N. F. fon-Mekk, ed. V. A. Zhdanov and N. T. Zhegin, 3 vols. (Moscow, 1934–6)), an event that led to renewed interest in the relationship between composer and patron, especially outside Russia, where many of von Meck’s descendants were then living. In 1937, for instance, Barbara von Meck, the widow of Nadezhda’s favourite grandson, included a large number of translations in her ‘Beloved Friend’: The Story of Tchaikowsky and Nadejda von Meck (New York, 1937), co-written with Catherine Drinker Bowen. Abridged and retitled, this book was re-published in 1971 to coincide with the appearance of Ken Russell’s infamous biopic (The Music Lovers: The Story of Tchaikowsky and Nadejda von Meck (London, 1971)). Then, many decades later, von Meck’s granddaughter (and Tchaikovsky’s great-niece) Galina published her translation of a more complete set of the letters written between 1876 and 1878 (‘To My Best Friend’: Correspondence between Tchaikovsky and Nadezdha von Meck, 1876–1878, trans. Galina von Meck, ed. Edward Garden and Nigel Gotteri (Oxford, 1993)). Nor is interest in this particular aspect of Tchaikovsky’s biography limited to just the English-speaking world. Written by a trained Slavist with a background in nineteenth-century nihilist thought, Wanda Bannour’s L’Étrange Baronne von Mekk: La dame de pique de Tchaïkovsky (Paris, 1988) is an overblown work that reads the relationship between Tchaikovsky and von Meck through the unlikely prism of the fatal involvement between Hermann and the Countess in the opera Queen of Spades. Fortunately, the account published by the indefatigable Henri Troyat (La Baronne et le musician: Madame von Meck et Tchaïkovski (Paris, 2003)) is altogether more measured and thorough.

Alongside the study of previously taboo topics (turn-of-the-century modernism and the early Soviet avant-garde, religious music, émigré music), a priority for Russian scholars since 1991 has been the establishment of a body of primary documentation free from the results of Soviet censorship. Yet the post-Soviet publishing scene can be as deceptive as it has been revelatory; the three-volume edition of P. I. Chaykovsky, Perepiska s N. F. fon-Mekk (Moscow...