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Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Comic Tchaikovsky: 'The Tsarina's Slippers'

Tchaikovsky is famous for dark, brooding symphonies, and of all his operas, only one is a comedy. Yet his fanciful score The Tsarina's Slippers is surely among the most charming of all Russian comic operas.

An Audio Introduction to the Opera

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Mravinsky's Supercharged Tchaikovsky

Evgeny Mravinsky's intense Tchaikovsky recordings are among the most hair-raising performances captured on disc. hide caption

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The NPR Classical 50

Mravinsky's Supercharged Tchaikovsky

No one possessed the nerve, or ability, to perform Tchaikovsky's final symphonies with as much dark and passionate intensity as the Russian conductor Evgeny Mravinsky.

Ted Libbey And Fred Child Recommend Symphonies 4-6 by Tchaikovsky

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Van Cliburn's Classic Tchaikovsky

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The NPR Classical 50

Van Cliburn's Classic Tchaikovsky

Hear the lanky Texan's iconic 1958 recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, made on the heels of his historic victory at the very first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Ted Libbey Recommends Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1

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Music Interviews

Insults And Praise On The Classical Campaign

Commentator Miles Hoffman offers a classical variation on a political theme: insults and endorsements among the great composers. Invectives hurled at their colleagues and competitors were effective means of shaping public opinion. Whether positive, negative or the all-too-common flip-flop, classical-music criticism, just like political commentary, is little more than biased opinion in time.

Insults And Praise On The Classical Campaign

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Music

Rejection Revisited: 'Eugene Onegin'

Tchaikovsky combined a personal, romantic entanglement with a passionate story by Pushkin to create Eugene Onegin, a fiery drama that soon became the composer's most popular opera.

Teatro Carlo Felice on World of Opera -- 'Eugene Onegin'

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Herbert von Karajan's Symphonic Obsessions

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Music Interviews

Herbert von Karajan's Symphonic Obsessions

Karajan shot to the top of the classical music scene in the 1950s, remaining supremely powerful until he died in 1989. He left a legacy of gorgeous recordings, as well as a fair amount of controversy.

Herbert von Karajan's Symphonic Obsessions

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Driveway Moments

Van Cliburn: Treasuring Moscow After 50 Years

Fifty years ago, a tall 23-year-old Texan shook up the music world by winning the first Tchaikovsky Competition, in Moscow at the height of the Cold War. Van Cliburn reminisces about his victory and his unconventional career.

Van Cliburn: Treasuring Moscow After 50 Years

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Fishko Files

How Van Cliburn Took Moscow

WNYC Radio

Fifty years ago, a classical pianist from Texas took advantage of a thaw in the Cold War and left for the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in the Soviet Union. He came back to a ticker-tape parade in New York.

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Tchaikovsky's Maid of Orleans

Not many 70-year-old sopranos could score a box office hit portraying a teenage heroine, but Mirella Freni did it as Joan of Arc, the title character of Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans, at the Washington National Opera.

Interview with Mirella Freni

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