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THE STORY OF PETER TSCHAIKOWSKY; Part I by Opal Wheeler

THE STORY OF PETER TSCHAIKOWSKY; Part I

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Pub Date: Oct. 21st, 1953
Publisher: Dutton

Like her biography of Chopin (1948, 1949) the second volume of this will follow next year. And like all of her other biographies of famous musicians, Paganini and Schumann among them, this is a watered-down, insipid portrait, a poor offering to a young public of the Russian master of romantic music. There are his childhood days in Votkinsk and Petrograd, his stint as a frustrated young lawyer and then his days as a struggling student and composer who at last hears his first symphony performed. But the more concrete facts are buried in a hackneyed, over-excited narrative that concentrates on the sentimental rather than the actual.