At home with Tchaikovsky

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This was published 13 years ago

At home with Tchaikovsky

Pride of place ... the entrance to the Russian composer's home-museum in Klin.

Pride of place ... the entrance to the Russian composer's home-museum in Klin.Credit: AFP

With a song in his heart, Scott Bevan visits the spot where the Russian composer's final works were penned.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky may have been excellent on the piano but visitors to the composer's final home in the Russian town of Klin are required to quickly become masters of pianissimo. To follow in the master's footsteps, you have to tread softly.

No sooner have you entered the house-museum than an attendant thrusts a pair of slippers, known as bakhily, at your feet. The bakhily slide over your shoes and are worn primarily for conservation reasons. After all, the floorboards are well over a century old and, without bakhily, in the winter months you would drag a trail of snow through the house. But there is also a sense that the noise-deadening footwear helps preserve the atmosphere that enticed Tchaikovsky here in the first place.

According to the museum's guide book, Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother, Anatoly, saying he wanted ''a calm, quiet place for work''. By 1892, when he moved into this house, Tchaikovsky was famous internationally; he needed not just a home but a refuge.

Generations of music lovers and helpless romantics have sought escape through the works of Tchaikovsky. Yet to write some of his greatest compositions, Tchaikovsky escaped to Klin. These days, apart from being the place where the composer spent his final years, Klin has few distinguishing features. Even in Tchaikovsky's day, the town's biggest claim to fame was, well, Tchaikovsky. Perhaps it was the lack of attractions that made it attractive to a composer seeking space to work.

Tchaikovsky moved to the area from Moscow in the mid-1880s and fell in love with it. He could wander through the villages and surrounding forests, which he adored, as they fed his thoughts and his music. ''I love our Russian nature more than any other,'' he wrote. And he could live and work without being in the public eye.

Klin is 85 kilometres north-west of Moscow. In the late 19th century, that meant the capital was close enough for Tchaikovsky and his friends to visit each other but far enough away to keep the critics and gawkers at bay. But not any more.

The town is easily accessible from Moscow. A highway links the two and, in theory, the drive takes less than two hours. But, given the frequency and viscosity of Moscow traffic jams, you could listen to a fair chunk of Tchaikovsky's catalogue on the car stereo and still not have reached the city's limits.

The less frustrating option is to catch a train from Leningradsky station.

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Arriving at the flaking grandeur of Klin station, there is token acknowledgement of Tchaikovsky. A bust of the composer squats on the platform. Klin folk might be proud of their most famous former resident but don't expect a song and dance - or even a sign in English - about how to get to the house-museum, which is a few kilometres from the station. Grab a taxi or pile into a little local bus, known as a marshrukta, ask for ''Tchaikovsky Dom [house]'' and enjoy the journey to a peaceful destination.

From the moment you arrive at the estate, you feel as though you have gone back in time. Not right back to the Tsarist days of Tchaikovsky's life but to the Soviet era. To gain access to the grounds, we walk through a rather austere reception building where, on our first visit, we are greeted by another legacy of the socialist era.

The ticket seller soon realises we aren't Russian, so she flips her admission prices card, indicating that we have to pay almost twice as much. I explain we live in Moscow and show our identification cards. With an expression that isn't exactly beaming with Waltz of the Flowers sweetness and light, she treats us like locals.

The grounds and house are worth the admission at twice the locals' price. The path to the house meanders through a park.

The noise of the 21st century subsides, you can sit at the feet of a statue of Tchaikovsky or stroll, just as he did.

The double-storey house appears through the trees. Its wooden exterior is painted a dignified grey and proudly wears trimmings of Russian tradition in the fretwork above the verandahs and in the gables.

Through the windows seeps a warm glow. So, on first impression, the house seems to have taken on the character of the man who once lived here, or at least how he looks in so many of his portrait photos.

In front of the house, during the warm months, is a well-ordered garden spraying out from a central path. Tchaikovsky enjoyed gardening, or at least he loved what bloomed here. The flowers ended up in vases; the inspiration they helped feed was transposed into his compositions.

While Tchaikovsky raved rhapsodically about spring (''What a miracle … with its unpredictable character, its wonderful power!''), he found beauty at all times of the year. And so can the visitor. I see the garden in the middle of summer, when it's a mass of colour, and during winter, when the outlook is stark but no less stunning, comprising little more than bare tree branches etched on the snow. It's the ideal setting to listen to his Symphony No. 1 (Winter Daydreams). Yet no matter the season, to see Tchaikovsky's garden enriches what you hear in his music, for it allows you to wander a little inside his head.

Wandering - or shuffling in the bakhily - in his house offers a glimpse of the public figure as well as the private character. On the ground floor is a room displaying some of Tchaikovsky's personal items and gifts from admirers, including a beautiful conductor's baton monogrammed with the initials P.I.T. (Tchaikovsky was also an acclaimed conductor). On this floor the building feels like a museum. Shuffle up the grand staircase to the second floor and the atmosphere is more like that of a house.

There are more reminders of a well-travelled man, such as a clock Tchaikovsky bought in Prague and a small Statue of Liberty inkwell, a souvenir of his triumphant 1891 tour of the US. Yet what immediately catches the eye is a grand piano in the middle of the house's reception room. On the keys of that piano, Tchaikovsky's fingers teased out melodies that still have the power to enthral, including music for the ballets The Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker and his final two symphonies.

Tchaikovsky lived in this house for only the last year and a half of his life. Yet some extraordinary music was written here. In the composer's bedroom, a dozen or so steps from the piano, is a table by a window overlooking the garden.

It was here that Tchaikovsky wrote his Symphony No. 6. It's a privilege to be standing at the spot where Tchaikovsky wrote what he called ''the best and most sincere of all my works. I love it like no other of my musical children.'' And you can also gaze upon the simple single bed where the composer slept and dreamt.

Tchaikovsky said he poured his ''whole soul'' into his Symphony No. 6. But there is still evidence of his soul in this house. There are bookcases crammed with one of Tchaikovsky's other great loves - books. The walls are dressed with photos and pictures of his family, friends and heroes, including a portrait of Beethoven.

There are little writing nooks where Tchaikovsky worked on a score or replied to the piles of correspondence and requests that were posted to Klin. It is a place that feels as though it was lived in and that remains alive and loved. Much like Tchaikovsky's music.

Tchaikovsky's house was turned into a museum by his brother, Modest, in 1894, a year after the composer's death.

It has attracted millions of visitors, including renowned composers and musicians. The musically gifted are invited to play the grand piano; the rest of us are simply thankful for Tchaikovsky's musical gift. The notes in the visitors' books indicate that for many, the journey to Klin is a pilgrimage.

It is hard to imagine what Tchaikovsky would make of his refuge as a public drawcard. But the sight of visitors from around the world shuffling through his house in bakhily, demonstrating a level of grace you would never find in a performance of his Swan Lake, would surely compose a smile on his face and a song in his heart.

FAST FACTS

Getting there

Thai Airways has a fare to Moscow for about $1660, flying to Bangkok (about 9hr), then Moscow (about 10hr). Fare is low-season return from Melbourne and Sydney including tax. Australians require a visa for a stay of up to 30 days. You must be invited to Russia by a registered travel agency in Russia before obtaining the visa.

Trains regularly leave for Klin from Moscow's Leningradsky station. From Klin station, take bus Nos. 5, 30, 37 or 40 to the museum.

Visiting there

Tchaikovsky House museum is at 48 Tchaikovskogo Street, Klin. It is open 10am-6pm; closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and on the last Monday of each month. Entry costs 280 roubles ($9.20) or, if you're Russian, 160 roubles.

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