Moscow / St. Petersburg

Moscow: Kremlin / Conservatory of Music / Tretyakov Gallery Hotel Ukraine / St. Petersburg: Ballet School

St. Petersburg: Travelling in the winter landscape

Moscow: Gorky Park / Winter Life

Moscow: Kolomenskoye / Rostov: Kremlin

Ukraine / Russia

Date of Production: 2015-04-17

Playing Time: 01:00:02

Catalogue Number: 2.110296

UPC: 747313529650

The Places

Our visit starts in Moscow, with the Kremlin, the famous Conservatory
of Music and the Tretyakov Art Gallery, with its unrivalled collection of Russian paintings. We see the splendour of some of the Metro stations in St. Petersburg and much of the winter landscape in Moscow and in St Petersburg. We end with commemoration of Napoleon's defeat in 1812 and his retreat from Moscow during a bitter winter.

The Music

Tchaikovsky's disastrous marriage to an infatuated admirer in July 1877 ended after just a few weeks, when he left for his brother-in-law's estate at Kamenka to escape from a wife to whom he had taken an invincible aversion. By the end of September, after attempted suicide, his marriage was at an end, and in October he left Russia to find relief in travel. In these extraordinary circumstances he nevertheless continued to work on the fourth of his six symphonies, completing it in early January 1878. Its first performance was given six weeks later in Moscow under the direction of Nikolay Rubinstein, attended by his new patroness Nadezhda von Meck, to whom it was dedicated, but in the composer's absence.