Tchaikovsky (review)

This 2006 BBC documentary strives to explain the genius of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky by finding biographical parallels to the emotions conveyed by his music. Director Matthew Whiteman alternates between visits to the places in the composer's life by Charles Hazelwood, who also conducts fragments of many of Tchaikovsky's major works, and dramatizations of the high points in his life. Occasionally such approaches can result in one format (musical lecture or drama) overwhelming the other, but Whiteman and his collaborators achieve a balance to create an informative and entertaining documentary.

Tchaikovsky is presented in two fifty-two-minute segments entitled "The Creation of Genius," focusing on the composer's early career, and "Fortune and Tragedy," dealing with his fame and early death at fifty-three. Hazelwood, a veteran of BBC radio and television programs about classical music, establishes the right tone at the beginning, presenting Tchaikovsky as a complex figure whose genius cannot be fully appreciated without knowing about the events which influenced the music. Hazelwood visits the composer's residence in Klin (now a museum) and sites associated with Tchaikovsky in St. Petersburg. He also talks with young musicians, all of whom emphasize the Russian ness of the composer.

While Hazelwood discusses Tchaikovsky's devotion to his mother, closeness with his brother Modest, homosexuality, and illfated marriage to Antonia Milyukova, these matters are vividly dramatized by Whiteman and co-writer Suzy Klein. According to the filmmakers, Tchaikovsky's guilt over his homosexuality led to the romantic longings in many of his compositions, especially Romeo and Juliet and Eugene Onegin. The composer is painted as a paranoid so afraid of a scandal destroying his career that he decides to get married and proposes to the first woman who shows any interest in him, the adoring fan Antonia. The Fourth Sym phony is presented as mirroring both his hope and his despair. The most dramatic scene involves a confrontation with his mentor, Anton Rubinstein (Nicholas Jones), who calls his piano concerto "childish," as Tchaikovsky declares his independence from the musical establishment.

Whiteman skillfully alternates between Hazelwood's commentary and the dramatization so that the viewer always fully understands the point of each scene. The dramatization is dominated by Ed Stoppard, who resembles the wiry Tchaikovsky much more than does Richard Chamberlain in Ken Russell's flawed but flamboyant The Music Lovers (1971). Stoppard, the son of Tom Stoppard, is not afraid of making the composer looks ridiculous, as when he shrinks in horror from Antonia's nakedness. The actor, whose performance resembles a meshing of the neurotic styles of Mont gomery Clift and Anthony Hopkins, ably conveys the anguish of Tchaikovsky's inability to reconcile the difference between his private and public selves.

Officially, Tchaikovsky, like his mother, died of cholera, but this version is questioned in a forty-nine-minute extra, Who Killed Tchaikovsky?, a 1993 presentation of BBC's Omnibus series. Host Anthony Holden, a journalist who would write a 1995 biography of Tchaikovsky, visits many of the same sites as Hazelwood and interviews music historians, musicians, and medical experts about the cause of the composer's death. Either he deliberately drank contaminated water to contract the disease, was infected some other way, or committed suicide to avoid some unknown scandal. Holden arrives at no conclusive view. Producer-director John Purdie's film is less stylish and compelling than Whiteman's, with too many unnecessary shots of Holden thinking, as well as smoking and even sleeping on a plane. Who Killed Tchaikovsky?, nevertheless, is of interest in filling in some of the gaps in Tchaikovsky. The DVD will interest both serious students of music as well as generalists because of the fascinating complexity of the composer's life.