Conductor - James Stobart
Corn Exchange - King's Lynn
 

Overture: Romeo and Juliet

Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Most composers seemed to have started out on another course before settling into what has always been an uncertain and ill-rewarded profession. Tchaikovsky's first steps were towards the legal profession and, by the age of 19, he had obtained a position in the Ministry of Justice in St Petersburg. Encouraged by the director of the Moscow Conservatoire, Anton Rubenstein, who thought Tchaikovsky "definitely talented" if somewhat careless, he gave up his "day" job to study music full-time. The young man's compositions were, by and large, coolly received but he was buoyed up by the encouragement of established colleagues Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov. Indeed the idea for the "Fantasy Overture Romeo and Juliet" came from Balikirev who took a demanding, often severely critical, interest in the music's genesis, development and fruition. Sadly, the first performance in 1870 was hindered by a sensational court case surrounding Rubenstein and a female student. The settlement against the eminent musician the previous day incited a noisy demonstration in his favour when he appeared on the concert platform and proved much more interesting to the audience than the new overture. Tchaikovsky's ever present melancholy deepened. He wrote to his sister, "There is no one in Moscow with whom I can enter into really intimate, familiar and homely relations. I have a great longing for the sound of children's voices and for a share in all the trifling interests of a home". None of these things did he ever attain but, starting with the success that "Romeo and Juliet" achieved abroad, his genius was fully recognised.
 
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