Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Tchaikovsky's Voice

Tchaikovsky's Voice

The following recording was made in Moscow in January 1890, by Julius Block on behalf of Thomas Edison.

His real voice
Sorry, your browser either has JavaScript disabled or does not have any supported player.
You can download the clip or download a player to play the clip in your browser.
Recorded January,1890
  • Anton Rubinstein: What a wonderful thing.
  • J. Block: Finally.
  • E. Lavrovskaya A disgusting...how he dares slyly to name me.
  • Vasily Safonov : (Sings).
  • P. Tchaikovsky: This trill could be better.
  • E. Lavrovskaya: (sings).
  • P. Tchaikovsky: Block is a good fellow, but Edison is even better.
  • E. Lavrovskaya: (sings) A-o, a-o.
  • V. Safonov: (In German) Peter Jurgenson in Moscow.
  • P. Tchaikovsky: Who just spoke? It seems to have been Safonov. (Whistles)

According to musicologist Leonid Sabaneyev, Tchaikovsky was not comfortable with being recorded for posterity and tried to shy away from it. On an apparently separate visit from the one related above, Block asked the composer to play something on a piano or at least say something. Tchaikovsky refused. He told Block, "I am a bad pianist and my voice is raspy. Why should one eternalize it?"

Read more about this topic:  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Famous quotes containing the words tchaikovsky and/or voice:

    “Roll over, Beethoven,
    And tell Tchaikovsky the news.”
    —Chuck Berry (b. 1926)

    “a voice still so hollow
    That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago,
    When you were all aglow,
    And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!”
    —Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)