Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and The Five - Belyayev Circle

Belyayev Circle

In November 1887, Tchaikovsky arrived in Saint Petersburg in time to hear several of the Russian Symphony Concerts, one of which included the first complete performance of the final version of his First Symphony and another the premiere of the revised version of Rimsky-Korsakov's Third Symphony. Before this visit he had spent much time keeping in touch with Rimsky-Korsakov and those around him. Rimsky-Korsakov, along with Alexander Glazunov, Anatol Lyadov and several other nationalistically-minded composers and musicians, had formed a group called the Belyayev circle. This group was named after timber merchant Mitrofan Belyayev, an amateur musician who became an influential music patron and publisher after he had taken an interest in Glazunov's work. During Tchaikovsky's visit, he spent much time in the company of these men, and his somewhat fraught relationship with The Five would meld into a more harmonious one with the Belyayev circle. This relationship would last until his death in late 1893.

As for The Five, the group had long since dispersed, Mussorgsky had died in 1881 and Borodin had followed in 1887. Cui continued to write negative reviews of Tchaikovsky's music but was seen by the composer as merely a critical irritant. Balakirev lived in isolation and was confined to the musical sidelines. Only Rimsky-Korsakov remained fully active as a composer.

A side benefit of Tchaikovsky's friendship with Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov was an increased confidence in his own abilities as a composer, along with a willingness to let his musical works stand alongside those of his contemporaries. Tchaikovsky wrote to von Meck in January 1889, after being once again well represented in Belyayev's concerts, that he had "always tried to place myself outside all parties and to show in every way possible that I love and respect every honorable and gifted public figure in music, whatever his tendency", and that he considered himself "flattered to appear on the concert platform" beside composers in the Belyayev circle. This was an acknowledgment of wholehearted readiness for his music to be heard with that of these composers, delivered in a tone of implicit confidence that there were no comparisons from which to fear.