Igor Talankin – Chaykovskiy aka Tchaikovsky (1969)

adminNovember 4, 2019

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Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was perhaps the greatest Russian composer of all. This is a two-and-a-half-hour bio-pic telling of the last twenty years of his life, and of his friendship with Baroness Nadezhda von Meck (an outstanding woman of her time, who for many years was Tchaikovsky’s patroness).

photographs of Tchaikovsky and Nadezhda von Meck.

The film also includes flashbacks to the composer’s childhood and adolescent years, with his life poetically recounted against a background of fragments from his operas and ballets performed by the best Russian musicians.

Executive Producer and Musical Director, the multi-Oscar winning composer Dmitri Tiomkin (1894-1979) – who was born only a few months after Tchaikovsky had died, and who left Russia after the Revolution in 1917 and settled in America – returned to Russia to arrange and conduct the soundtrack. (This is notable because it was before such cultural exchanges became commonplace.) The music in the film is a potpourri of Tchaikovsky’s own music, heavily drawing on the symphonies and ballets; where Tiomkin scored scenes himself the music uses variations of Tchaikovsky-like melodies.