The Tchaikovsky Papers

A wealth of previously unpublished letters and personal documents drawn from the family archives of the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

From the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Doors of Eden is an extraordinary feat of the imagination and a page-turning adventure about parallel universes and the monsters that they hide. They thought we were safe. They were wrong. Four years ago, two girls went looking for monsters on Bodmin Moor. Only one came back. Lee thought she'd lost Mal, but now she's miraculously returned. But what happened that day on the moors? And where has she been all this time? Mal's reappearance hasn't gone unnoticed by MI5 officers either, and Lee isn't the only one with questions. Julian Sabreur is investigating an attack on top physicist Kay Amal Khan. This leads Julian to clash with agents of an unknown power - and they may or may not be human. His only clue is grainy footage, showing a woman who supposedly died on Bodmin Moor. Dr Khan's research was theoretical; then she found cracks between our world and parallel Earths. Now these cracks are widening, revealing extraordinary creatures. And as the doors crash open, anything could come through. "Tchaikovsky weaves a masterful tale... a suspenseful joyride through the multiverse." (Booklist)

divdivIn the two decades prior to the Civil War, the Hutchinson Family Singers of New Hampshire became America’s most popular musical act. Out of a Baptist revival upbringing, John, Asa, Judson, and Abby Hutchinson transformed themselves in the 1840s into national icons, taking up the reform issues of their age and singing out especially for temperance and antislavery reform. This engaging book is the first to tell the full story of the Hutchinsons, how they contributed to the transformation of American culture, and how they originated the marketable American protest song. /DIVdivThrough concerts, writings, sheet music publications, and books of lyrics, the Hutchinson Family Singers established a new space for civic action, a place at the intersection of culture, reform, religion, and politics. The book documents the Hutchinsons’ impact on abolition and other reform projects and offers an original conception of the rising importance of popular culture in antebellum America./DIV/DIV

An authoritative account of the life and work of Francis Poulenc, one of the most prolific and striking figures in twentieth-century classical music "An assured overview of Poulenc's life and work."--Alex Ross, New Yorker "Essential reading for anyone interested in the French musical culture of Poulenc's time. This is the biography the composer deserves."--Christopher Dingle, BBC Music Magazine, Named one of the Best Books on Classical Music in 2020 by BBC Music Magazine Francis Poulenc is a key figure in twentieth-century classical music, as well as an unorthodox and striking individual. Roger Nichols draws upon Poulenc's music and other primary sources to write an authoritative life of this great artist. Although associated with five other French composers in what came to be called "Les Six", Poulenc was very much sui generis in personality and in his music, where he excelled over a wide repertoire--opera, songs, ballet scores, chamber works, piano pieces, sacred and secular choral works, orchestral works and concertos. This book fully covers this wide range, while also describing the vicissitudes of Poulenc's life and the many important relationships he had with major figures such as Satie, Ravel, Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Cocteau and others.

"Look after your son's talents" : The literary notebook of Mariya Prokofieva / introductory essay, commentary, and translation by Pamela Davidson -- The Krzhizhanovsky-Prokofiev collaboration on "Eugene Onegin", 1936 (a lesser-known casualty of the Pushkin death jubilee) / introductory essay, commentary, and translation by Caryl Emerson -- Prokofiev and Atovmyan : Correspondence, 1933-1952 / introduction and commentary by Nelly Kravetz ; translation by Simon Morrison -- Prokofiev's immortalization / Leonid Maximenkov -- "I came too soon" : Prokofiev's early career in America / Stephen D. Press -- Lieutenant Kizhe : New media, new means / Kevin Bartig -- Observations on Prokofiev's sketchbooks / Mark Aranovsky ; translation by Jason Strudler -- Prokofiev on the Los Angeles Limited / Elizabeth Bergman -- Between two aesthetics : The revision of Pilnyak's "Mahogany" and Prokofiev's Fourth symphony / Marina Frolova-Walker -- After Prokofiev / Peter J. Schmelz -- Beyond death and evil : Prokofiev's spirituality and Christian Science / Leon Botstein.

"Horse riding, sword fighting, fistfights, escapes, chases... If anyone is looking for a successor to James Bond, Flashy is the one."—The New York Times In Volume II of the Flashman Papers, Flashman tangles with femme fatale Lola Montez and the dastardly Otto Von Bismarck in a battle of wits which will decide the destiny of a continent. In this volume of The Flashman Papers, Flashman, the arch-cad and toady, matches his wits, his talents for deceit and malice, and above all his speed in evasion against the most brilliant European statesman and against the most beauiful and unscrupulous adventuress of the era. From London gaming-halls and English hunting-fields to European dungeons and throne-rooms, he is involved in a desperate succession of escapes, disguises, amours and (when he cannot avoid them) hand-to-hand combats. All the while, the destiny of a continent rests on his broad and failing shoulders.

There is a special value to this book which none other has, namely the opportunity for two Russians with a specialized knowledge of Tchaikovsky to speak to each other on the same ground. Balanchine, as always when speaking his native tongue, expresses himself more freely here than in English. As a result, he touches upon many points that are of particular interest to his ballet public.

A thrilling new biography of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky—composer of some of the world’s most popular orchestral and theatrical music Tchaikovsky is famous for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed as a hopeless romantic, a suffering melancholic, or a morbid obsessive, the Tchaikovsky we think we know is a shadow of the fascinating reality. It is all too easy to forget that he composed an empire’s worth of music, and navigated the imperial Russian court to great advantage. In this iconoclastic biography, celebrated author Simon Morrison re-creates Tchaikovsky’s complex world. His life and art were framed by Russian national ambition, and his work was the emanation of an imperial subject: kaleidoscopic, capacious, cosmopolitan, decentred. Morrison reexamines the relationship between Tchaikovsky’s music, personal life, and politics; his support of Tsars Alexander II and III; and his engagement with the cultures of the imperial margins, in Ukraine, Poland, and the Caucasus. Tchaikovsky’s Empire unsettles everything we thought we knew—and gives us a vivid new appreciation of Russia’s most popular composer.

This book is the first full biography of George Szell, one of the greatest orchestra and opera conductors of the twentieth century. From child prodigy pianist and composer to world-renowned conductor, Szell's career spanned seven decades, and he led most of the great orchestras and opera companies of the world, including the New York Philharmonic, the NBC and Chicago Symphonies, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and Opera, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. A protégé of composer-conductor Richard Strauss at the Berlin State Opera, his crowning achievement was his twenty-four-year tenure as musical director of the Cleveland Orchestra, transforming it into one of the world's greatest ensembles, touring triumphantly in the United States, Europe, the Soviet Union, South Korea, and Japan. Michael Charry, a conductor who worked with Szell and interviewed him, his family, and his associates over several decades, draws on this first-hand material and correspondence, orchestra records, reviews, and other archival sources to construct a lively and balanced portrait of Szell's life and work from his birth in 1897 in Budapest to his death in 1970 in Cleveland. Readers will follow Szell from his career in Europe, Great Britain, and Australia to his guest conducting at the New York Philharmonic and his distinguished tenure at the Metropolitan Opera and Cleveland Orchestra. Charry details Szell's personal and musical qualities, his recordings and broadcast concerts, his approach to the great works of the orchestral repertoire, and his famous orchestrational changes and interpretation of the symphonies of Robert Schumann. The book also lists Szell's conducting repertoire and includes a comprehensive discography. In highlighting Szell's legacy as a teacher and mentor as well as his contributions to orchestral and opera history, this biography will be of lasting interest to concert-goers, music lovers, conductors, musicians inspired by Szell's many great performances, and new generations who will come to know those performances through Szell's recorded legacy.