New Adventures In Good Music

Happy Hump Day and Wet Wednesday!  This week, our New Adventure In Good Music takes us from Puccini's Italy to the Rodina (Motherland) to profile the man who wrote the first piece of Classical Music with which I fell in love.  I am speaking of course of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and his 1812 Overture.  I have since come to appreciate many more of this Great Composers works as I have become familiar with them.  The BBC Great Composers documentary down below is a fascinating look at this often misunderstood Great Man of Music.  

From the Video description enhanced by Wikipedia:

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (/ˈpjɔːtər ɪˈliɪtʃ tʃɪˈkɒfski/; Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский;[a 1] tr. Pyotr Ilyich Chaykovsky; 7 May 1840 -- 6 November 1893),[a 2] often anglicised as Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky /ˈpiːtər .../, was a Russian composer whose works included symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets, chamber music, and a choral setting of the Russian Orthodox Divine Liturgy. Some of these are among the most popular theatrical music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, which he bolstered with appearances as a guest conductor later in his career in Europe and the United States. One of these appearances was at the inaugural concert of Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1891. Tchaikovsky was honored in 1884 by Emperor Alexander III, and awarded a lifetime pension in the late 1880s.While his music has remained popular among audiences, critical opinions were initially mixed. Some Russians did not feel it was sufficiently representative of native musical values and were suspicious that Europeans accepted it for its Western elements. In apparent reinforcement of the latter claim, some Europeans lauded Tchaikovsky for offering music more substantive than base exoticism, and thus transcending stereotypes of Russian classical music. Tchaikovsky's music was dismissed as "lacking in elevated thought," according to longtime New York Times music critic Harold C. Schonberg, and its formal workings were derided as deficient for not following Western principles stringently.

Tchaikovsky wrote many works that are popular with the classical music public, including his Romeo and Juliet, the 1812 Overture, his three ballets (The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty) and Marche Slave. These, along with his First Piano Concerto and his Violin Concerto, the last three of his six numbered symphonies and his operas The Queen of Spades and Eugene Onegin, are among his most familiar works. Almost as popular are the Manfred Symphony, Francesca da Rimini, the Capriccio Italien and the Serenade for Strings.

Tchaikovsky displayed an unusually wide stylistic and emotional range, from salon works of innocuous charm to symphonies of tremendous depth, power and grandeur. Some of his works, such as the Variations on a Rococo Theme, employ a poised "Classical" form reminiscent of 18th-century composers such as Mozart (the composer whose work was his favorite). Other compositions, such as his Little Russian symphony and his opera Vakula the Smith, flirt with musical practices more akin to those of the Five, especially in their use of folk song.  Other works, such as the last three symphonies, employ a personal musical idiom that facilitated intense emotional expression.

The companion piece I have selected for my tumblr is the above mentions Serenade for Strings, Opus 48 with a recording by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sir Georg Solti.

The because it is Hump Day and you need something wet and wonderful to inspire said 'humping', this week's edition of Wet Wednesday should get your blood to boiling quite nicely.  You will find them splashing about the page down below the video.  Over on my tumblr, your Hottie of the Day!, Vasa Nestorovic, is hot enough to steam up a thousand showers.  I know he could steam mine up anytime!  Thanks for the visit, see you again soon.  Until next time as always, Enjoy!