New Webcast: Tchaikovsky & Taneyev: Mentor and Protégé

The Music Division is happy to announce a new webcast from our spring lecture series, featuring Senior Reference Specialist and occasional guest blogger Kevin Lavine.

Set within the artistic milieu of the last decades of Imperial Russia, Tchaikovsky & Taneyev: Mentor and Protégé traces the lives and careers of two of that country’s most influential composers: Petr Il’ich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), and his student Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev (1856-1915) — the former having enjoyed a worldwide celebrity during his lifetime, and the latter’s reputation having been eclipsed to some degree by his more famous mentor, despite his own monumental accomplishments. The two composers eventually became close colleagues, with Taneyev becoming a trusted friend and adviser to Tchaikovsky, and exerting a substantial influence on the elder composer’s music and legacy. Taneyev, outliving his mentor by nearly 20 years, went on to contribute substantially to nurturing Russia’s musical culture through teaching, performing, composing and writing, and through his immense talents and intellectual gifts, for which he is now recognized as one of the greatest music scholars of 19th century Russia.