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Beloved Friend, the romance of Tchaikowsky and Nadejda von Meck
Beloved Friend the romance of Tchaikowsky and Nadejda von Meck Author:Catherine Drinker Bowen and Barbara von Meck The true story of Peter Tchaikowsky and Nadejda von Meck has never been told until now. — That the wife of a nobleman, a woman who was beautiful, popular, fabulously wealthy - the mother of eleven children - for years lavished her attention and practically devoted her entire waking and dreaming existence to a composer whom she never met is, of co... more »urse, well known.
But why she did this - why during the thirteen years of their friendship they both took extreme measures never to meet - why she permitted Tchaikowsky to marry another woman - why she later gave him money to get a divorce - why Tchaikowsky alternated between the heights of exaltation in his friendship and the depths of self-abasement and despair - is an enigma that has never been satisfactorily explained until now.
The letters upon which this biography is based were hidden for years in Mme. von Meck's household. At the outbreak of the Revolution in Russia they were seized by the Bolsheviki; the originals are now in possession of the Soviet Government, which has refused to release them.
But fortunately for the musical world, translations of these letters were made by Barbara von Meck, the granddaughter of Nadejda; and Catherine Drinker Bowen, author of Friends and Fiddlers, has reconstructed the whole story.
It is a strangely moving story, the recounting of a romance that never came to full fruition, but which found its expression in music which has delighted the world with its tragic beauty and its lilting airs.« less