Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture Premieres in Moscow

On August 20, 1882, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture received its official premiere in Moscow. He had written it on commission, out of loyalty to the man who gave him his career, and told his patron he composed it without any warm and loving feelings. The war it commemorated had ended seventy years earlier, when Napoleon's Grand Army marched into Russia and a fraction of it marched out. Neither the cathedral nor the men who ordered the piece were there to hear it. The overture outlasted all of them, and its composer's opinion of it too.Send me a text!Support the show