Tchaikovsky

June 1, 2019
Suchet's fourth great-composer biography bearing the subtitle The Man Revealed grants that what needs revealing about Tchaikovsky is already his best-known nonmusical attribute, his homosexuality. Suppression of it started with the man himself, continued in his brother Modest's three-volume biography, and burgeoned under successive Russian regimes, especially Stalin's. Only since 1997 have the redactions and blacked-out parts of the composer's voluminous correspondence begun to be restored. Up-to-date but not conversant with this material?it's hardly all transcribed, let alone translated?Suchet knows enough to conjecture about Tchaikovsky's relationships and sex-trade activity. The composer was more than haunted by his sexuality; his angst and discomfort drove him to marry a seeming madwoman who refused divorce and bore three illegitimate children she neglected (all died in childhood). Fortunately, he attracted another peculiar but more substantial woman, wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck, who crucially subsidized him for 13 years; they met only once, bumping into each other while walking independently. Those relationships prove as fascinating as?maybe more fascinating than?Tchaikovsky's erotic life in Suchet's gracefully written, copiously color-illustrated, accessible portrait.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)