When Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed his opera The Tsarina's Slippers, based on Gogol's story "Christmas Eve," he came up with something he had never managed before: an operatic comedy. It was his one and only comic opera, and somehow, that doesn't seem surprising

In many respects, Tchaikovsky's life was difficult and troubling. His internal struggles with his own sexuality are well known and hotly debated. His one marriage ended almost before it began, and its unhappiness led him to wade into the icy Moscow River in what may have been a suicide attempt.

One of his most famous works, the Symphony No. 4, begins with an ominous theme that's become known as the "fate motif." The subject of fate seemed to intrigue the composer; he once said that when confronting fate, a person's only choice is to "submit to it and lament in vain."

Tchaikovsky put his own lamentations front and center in his work. His well-known sixth symphony, called the Pathetique, is surely among music's most eloquent cries of anguish. Of Tchaikovsky's operas, the two most frequently seen onstage are both tragic psychodramas: Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades.

Yet there was a friendlier side to Tchaikovsky's musical personality. Every year at holiday time, children all over the world marvel at his whimsical ballet, The Nutcracker. And The Tsarina's Slippers, with a story based on a fanciful folk tale, is surely one of Russian opera's most charming comedies.

The opera began life in the mid-1870s with an entirely different title, Vakula the Smith. It was written for a competition sponsored by the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. To meet the contest's deadline, Tchaikovsky cranked out the score in just six weeks — only to discover that he had misunderstood that deadline, and could have taken an additional six months.

Still, Tchaikovsky was happy with the opera, and it did win the competition. But the premiere got a cool reception. So, about 10 years later, Tchaikovsky revised the score extensively and gave it its new name. It never did achieve the success he had hoped for, but late in life he still called The Tsarina's Slippers the best of all his operas.

On World of Opera, host Lisa Simeone presents a colorful production from London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It stars tenor Vsevolod Grivnov as the young man Vakula, and soprano Olga Guryakova as Oxana, the love of his life.

See the previous edition of World of Opera or the full archive

This year offered a fascinating mix of recordings, including concert-hall show stoppers, classic choral stylings, a chamber music "dream team," up-and-coming pianists and a high-tech remastering of a master at play. With these 2009 releases, you'll find a few fresh faces — musicians hovering around age 30 — including young pianist Jonathan Biss (a former NPR young-artist-in-residence) and the sublime Dutch fiddler Janine Jansen. Plus, this year proved exceptionally strong for music by and from Russians. Enjoy this sampling of both classic and less-familiar fare.

Click here for more entries in our Best Music of 2009 series.

It's lovely to see Janine Jansen, the striking young Dutch violinist, celebrated more and more for her amazing musical talents and not just her good looks. For evidence of those abilities, just listen to this gangbusters performance, in which Jansen plays Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

When Jansen first appeared on the scene in the late 1990s, her CDs' cover photos played up her bone structure a lot more than her Stradivarius. Over the years, though, those CD covers have become increasingly demure. As Jansen performs with more conductors and orchestras around the world, the word's gotten out: She can play with the best of them.

A few months ago, I asked Paavo Jarvi, music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, what he thought of the Jansen phenomenon. He, too, had questioned the marketing of her debut, but now he said, "I don't know any other player who inhabits a piece of music the way Janine does onstage. She's amazing."

I put that same question to Edo de Waart, who conducted this Los Angeles Philharmonic performance. From many years of interviewing de Waart, I've learned that he is not one to strew flowers. But Edo said, "She played Tchaikovsky so full of passion and sound-colors, and [with] sheer virtuosity. It was a full, blazing account of the piece."

That is about the highest praise an artist could ever get.

(Janine Jansen's new recording of music by Beethoven and Britten will be released Sept. 29.)

Tchaikovsky's Troubled Concerto

Today's pop psychologists might brand Peter Tchaikovsky one of those people who needs a crisis in order to work productively.

In 1878, he wrote one of his most brilliant pieces, the Violin Concerto in D, while reeling from the trauma of a miserably failed marriage. To add insult to injury, the violinist for whom he wrote it dubbed it "impossible to play."

That fiddler was a virtuoso named Leopold Auer. He was no lightweight, but the rigors of the new piece proved too much for him. The concerto was passed on to a man named Yosif Kotek, but he also failed. Three years passed. Then violinist Adolf Brodsky came along, and the work finally received its premiere in Vienna on Dec. 4, 1881. Alas, it was not an auspicious debut. The sharp-tongued critic Eduard Hanslick wrote that the violin was not played, but "torn apart, pounded black and blue." A vivid image, but was it true? As it turns out, Hanslick and Tchaikovsky both lived long enough to see the concerto become a beloved part of the repertoire.

Related Links

• Jansen's Site
• Tchaikovsky Bio
• Classics in Concert: Full Concert Archive
• Full Classical Archive

As a symphonist, Tchaikovsky enriched the repertoire and exerted a vital influence on later composers as diverse as Sibelius, Prokofiev and Shostakovich.

Of his first three symphonies, the second (known as the Little Russian) has had the greatest success, mainly because of its rip-roaring finale and memorable melodic material. But it was only when he set to work on his Symphony No. 4 in F minor (1877) that Tchaikovsky discovered — in the expression of heated emotion — the key to melodic inspiration and mastery of form, and as a consequence found his voice as a symphonic composer.

His final two symphonies, with interior programs known only to the composer, are notably dark. The funereal opening, wide swings of mood and feverish — though, in the end, implausibly festive — climax of the Fifth Symphony (1888) convey a psychological drama that could hardly be put into words. With the Symphony No. 6 in B minor (Pathetique), Tchaikovsky went much deeper, fashioning a symphony of the most profound personal confession, as original in its method and formal concept as it was in tone and emotional content. The English musicologist David Brown has rightly characterized it as "the most truly original symphony to have been composed in the 70 years since Beethoven's Ninth."

Mravinsky's Hair-Raising Recordings

The recordings by Evgeny Mravinsky and his Leningrad Philharmonic, taped in the autumn of 1960 in London while on tour, are among the absolute classics of the catalog. They are readings of the utmost intensity; no one else has had the nerve, or ability, to play the music this way. The treatment is very Russian: the passions more feverish, the melancholy darker, the climaxes louder.

It has been said that the string musicians played as if their lives depended on it. Equally distinctive are the wind and brass timbres; those who heard the Leningrad Philharmonic in performance under Mravinsky say that no other ensemble sounded remotely like it in pianissimo or fortissimo. The sonics are remarkably strong for the time, though a little edgy in the loudest pages. These accounts leap out of the speakers as if they were being played in the here and now.

Related Links

• A Touch Of Tchaikovsky From Joshua Bell
• Perilous Passion: Tchaikovsky's 'Mazeppa'
• Van Cliburn's Classic Tchaikovsky
• The NPR Classical 50: Full Music Archive
• A Biography Of Tchaikovsky

The Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is underway in Fort Worth, Texas (check npr.org/music on Monday, June 8 to hear the winners). To mark the occasion, Ted Libbey (with radio host Bonnie Grice) recommends Cliburn's own brilliant recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1.

Although hypersensitive by nature, Tchaikovsky was nonetheless an astute judge of his own work. He was understandably shaken when in 1875 he brought the manuscript of his First Piano Concerto to his colleague, the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, who pronounced it unperformable and in need of wholesale revision.

Yet Tchaikovsky refused to alter a single note — and no decision ever proved more sensible. From the day of its premiere (which curiously enough did not take place in Russia but in Boston), the Concerto in B flat minor has become the standard against which all virtuosos must measure themselves. The grand flourishes of its opening, the gossamer passagework of its Andantino, and the pyrotechnics of its finale are to pianists what Everest is to the mountain climber.

Cliburn's Killer Performance

With this 1958 recording made in Carnegie Hall, just weeks after he had won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Van Cliburn established himself overnight as one of the great interpreters of the piece.

The account is played from the heart, with a spellbinding virtuosity that seems almost effortless — a reminder that the concerto is genuine music, after all, not some merely flashy showpiece of fast octaves. Cliburn's playing has so much poise, and in the lyrical moments he brings such shape and expressiveness to the phrasing of the music. Also, the beautiful voicing of chords in the opening passage is achieved with such naturalness, and with a complete lack of bombast; it's no mere technical exercise for him, this is music that really means something.

Conductor Kiril Kondrashin draws committed playing from the RCA Symphony, and while the recording shows its age, it also conveys every nuance of a thrilling occasion.

To hear last week's feature, click here.

For a full archive of NPR's Classical 50, click here.

Related Links

• Full Classical Archive
• 2009 International Van Cliburn Piano Competition Site

In 1965, director David Lean came up with a movie that's essentially a three-hour flashback, recounting a bittersweet romance frustrated by political complexities during Russia's October Revolution. And while that formula may not seem like the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster, that's exactly what the film was. Lean's Doctor Zhivago was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, and won five.

In fact, the film's runaway success may not be all that surprising. Epic stories of troubled times in Russian history have been a winning formula for a long time. There were the astonishing, early 20th-century films of Sergei Eisenstein, such as The Battleship Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible. In the 19th century, opera houses staged sprawling, Russian epics such as Mussorgsky's dark psychodrama Boris Godunov and Borodin's spectacular Prince Igor.

Then there's the long tradition of historical epics in Russian literature, which inspired many of those films and operas. Doctor Zhivago was based on a novel by Boris Pasternak. Mussorgsky's Boris had roots in a tragedy by Alexander Pushkin. And it was another work by Pushkin that inspired Tchaikovsky's intense drama Mazeppa — another story of romance disrupted by violent events in Russian history.

Tchaikovsky's opera, and the poem by Pushkin that inspired it, are both based on a real life historical figure. Ivan Mazeppa was an influential leader early in the 1700s. He was the "hetman," or military ruler, of a Cossack people in what is now the western part of Ukraine.

Early in the 1700s, Mazeppa struck an alliance with King Charles of Sweden, and led a Ukrainian revolt against the Russian czar, Peter the Great. Whether Mazeppa was a heroic patriot or a notorious traitor depends on your point of view — and that dispute also plays a role in the opera. In any case, Mazeppa's ploy backfired. He was defeated by the Russians at the historic battle of Poltava, from which Pushkin's poem takes its name.

Both the poem and the opera also feature another, more personal event in Mazeppa's life: a decidedly operatic, May-December romance between the elderly Cossack general and Mariya, the young daughter of a man Mazeppa condemns to death.

On World of Opera, host Lisa Simeone Tchaikovsky's blockbuster from the Flemish Opera in Antwerp, with bass Nikolai Putilin in the title role and soprano Tatiana Pavlovskaya as Mariya.

See the previous edition of World of Opera or the full archive

In the waning days of the presidential campaign, music commentator Miles Hoffman offers a classical variation on a theme: insults and endorsements among the great composers. Just like politicians, many classical composers hurled invective at their colleagues and competitors. (They could also be nice when they wanted to.) Sometimes, music critics might even commit a flip-flop, endorsing a certain composer at one point before taking it all back later.

Hoffman calls the evaluation of composers' work by their peers "a continuous campaign for the future of the art form," and at its heart lies the competition for the praise of critics and attention of patrons.

Many examples of criticism cross the line from constructive to destructive, but there are also instances of composers and critics using their respected opinions to encourage positive attention. Enthusiastic endorsements, whether they stood the test of time or not, shaped public opinion just as effectively as insults.

However, as with politics, criticism of any kind, when taken out of context, is little more than biased opinion. In the end, the merits of a musician's (or politician's) work are illuminated only through time.

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• Brahms And Cats
• Appreciating Brahms The Prophet
• Financing The Classics: Beethoven's Benefactor
• How Bach And Brahms Made A Living
• A Classical Treasure Trove At YouTube
• Negative Campaigning: How Low Can You Go?

Lalo Schifrin's music for Mission Impossible is among the most celebrated themes in TV history, and one of the most appealing things about it, whether you're aware of it or not, is that it's in 5/4 time. Written for that iconic television series in the 1960's, the piece contains five beats to the measure, instead of the more typical three or four. (Count and you'll see — 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4-5.)

You would think by now, in our sophisticated world, 5/4 time would be commonplace. But in Western music, it's not — and it never was. In fact, pianist and writer Stuart Isacoff says that in the world of musical rhythms, things started out much more ambiguous than they have become.

"There was a time, if we look back to medieval music, where you have endless streams of notes that form vague contours," Isacoff says. "People tend to need some kind of an anchor to feel that there's some kind of organization happening rhythmically in the music."

Michael Beckerman, head of the music department at New York University, points to Tchaikovsky, who wanted to try something a little different when writing in the 1890s.

"You know, we have Tchaikovsky's example," Beckerman says. "The famous so-called 'waltz' from the Pathetique symphony, which is, of course, anything but a waltz."

Tchaikovsky wrote the second movement of his celebrated 6th symphony in 5 with a three–note figure, a triplet, which acts as a kind of diversionary tactic. But if you count it, you hear it: five, plain as day. Like other forms, time signatures and musical devices, 5/4 time works as a means of personal expression; Tchaikovsky made it sound like Tchaikovsky.

James Reese Europe, a Harlem musician working in the early 20th century, used it in a piece he wrote for a famous dance team of the era, Vernon and Irene Castle. Isachoff says the piece, titled "Castles Half and Half," is part fox trot, which is in 4, and part waltz, in 3.

When a restless Frederic Chopin began experimenting and improvising, he produced a classically Chopin-sounding sonata movement that can be counted in five.

But if there was a moment when the 5/4 time signature exploded into the public consciousness, it was certainly the Brubeck moment: Dave Brubeck's excursion into 5 made his name and his fortune, in the jazz hit "Take Five."

With "Take Five," Isachoff explains "we have 3 and 2, but it has a hotness to it. What we have in Brubeck is a complicated rhythm, and it's a rhythm that arises when you put 2 against 3. So that if you have one hand playing 2 and the other 3, that gives it a different swinging lilt, and therefore we end up with this pattern."

You would think that might have opened the floodgates for the use of 5. But you'd be wrong. Still, there's no question that it heightened the awareness of it, in a lovely and playful way. Beckerman says that some did follow suit.

"I remember when I was a kid there was a group called The Pentangle," Beckerman says. "They had a tune called 'Light Flight' and it made them stand out in some ways from other groups because of taking that kind of metrical chance."

But 5/4 is still an oddball thing that musicians and listeners love to collect and admire. Gustav Holst's piece, "Mars, Bringer of War," from The Planets is another well known example. These days it has even become fashionable to make a statement in 5 by adding a beat to something written in 4: Richard Rodgers' song "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" was reinterpreted by jazz pianist Brad Mehldau into a sort of lopsided jazz waltz — in 5/4 time.

In western music, Beckerman says, 5/4 time is less than a tradition, more than a gimmick. He cites bands including Radiohead, which have written songs that incorporate odd time signatures, such as "15 Step" from In Rainbows, which is in 5 as well.

"I think it's also an idea, a throwing down a gauntlet in certain places and styles," says Beckerman. "It was cool to do 5's and 7's, and I think that persists and lingers today. And it's sort of a way of making a certain kind of point about where you stand."

It's also a way of saying "I'm not going to get stuck in 3's and 4's like everybody else."

Related Links

• Five More In 5/4

Falling in love may be one of life's most delicious moments, but it almost always involves going out on a precarious emotional limb.

For example, chances are that at some point in your life, a sudden romantic impulse led you to reveal your love to someone who may or may not have returned those feelings — throwing caution to the wind, in hope of a joyful result. Today, that revelation might be delivered in a phone call, an e-mail or even a text message. In

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's day, that sort of confession was more likely to arrive in a letter.

When Tchaikovsky sat down to write Eugene Onegin in the spring of 1877, it was a case of life imitating art. The thing that attracted Tchaikovsky to the original story, by Alexander Pushkin, was a powerful scene in which the heroine, Tatyana, decides to profess her love in a letter to a man she has met only once.

Just weeks before, Tchaikovsky had retrieved his own mail to find a fervent love letter from a former student he had met at the Moscow Conservatory. At first, Tchaikovsky refused her. But her letters kept coming, and became more and more passionate. It's been said that Tchaikovsky identified so strongly with Pushkin's Tatyana, and was so angered at the callous character Onegin, that the composer gave in to his own admirer.

In the space of a few months, the composer found himself married — and with an opera already two-thirds complete. Tchaikovsky's marriage lasted three months. The drama that grew out of it has lasted a bit longer: It's still his most popular opera more than 125 years later.

In this edition of World of Opera, host Lisa Simeone presents Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, a quintessentially Russian drama, in a production from a historic hotbed of Italian opera: the venerable Teatro Carlo Felice, in Genoa.

See the previous edition of World of Opera or the full archive

Related Links

• Genoa's Teatro Carlo Felice
• Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin"

You've got to love Wu Han. I've been lucky to work with her on several projects, so I've seen her in many roles: solo pianist, chamber musician, teacher, lecturer, administrator, producer, mother. In every situation, in every interaction — whether she's chairing a meeting of hardnosed New York power brokers or entertaining a room full of her daughter's 12-year-old friends — Wu Han possesses a disarming combination of discipline and tenderness, always leavened by her matchless sense of style.

You can hear this all the way through our conversation about Tchaikovsky's Seasons. In her playing, first of all — so elegant and powerful, with a fluidity and a sense of effortless grace that only comes from years of concentrated practice. In the slight pause she might take before repeating a phrase: It's only half a heartbeat, but it shifts and opens the music into a gentle warmth.

Wu Han said that this collection of pieces by Tchaikovsky "went straight into my heart." I've heard Tchaikovsky's Seasons played by dozens of pianists, and they never made much of a dent in my heart — until this conversation with Wu Han, and until I heard her her play them. It's the same notes everyone else plays, but in her conversation and performance, she animated them and brought out their stories and charm in a way I'd never experienced.

About Tchaikovsky's Seasons

Composers find inspiration for writing music from not only lofty places, but also mundane ones. Bach wrote much of his music for "the greater glory of God," but Tchaikovsky churned out The Seasons piecemeal as a monthly column for a St. Petersburg periodical.

"I continue to bake musical pancakes," Tchaikovsky reportedly joked to a friend. "Today, I tossed the tenth."

In 1875, an editor named N.M. Bernard approached Tchaikovsky with the idea of writing 12 short piano pieces, one to be published each month in his magazine Nouvelliste. Tchaikovsky titled his pieces after the 12 months of the year — each a calendar snapshot, accompanied by a more descriptive subtitle and a short verse of poetry.

Although Tchaikovsky is not known for his solo piano music, several of his Seasons became popular, especially the gently rocking barcarolle he wrote for the month of June. Short, salon-like piano pieces were in vogue at the time, and were a potentially viable source of income for the cash-strapped Tchaikovsky. At this point in his career, he had yet to become a big-name composer ,and he hadn't yet encountered his fabulously wealthy benefactor Nadezhda von Meck.

Mother and Daughter at Play

Pianist Wu Han's initial inspiration to play The Seasons came from a mother's desire to connect with her daughter on a musical level.

"I learned these pieces actually for our daughter, Lilian. She was at that time about 7 or 8, at that tender age, and I wanted to introduce her to music. But sometimes a Beethoven sonata, as beautiful as it is, is not as fun for a 7-year-old. So I looked for these miniature descriptive pieces to play for her, and she loved them. She got so excited, she started to create dances around these pieces. Using my scarves, she would become an imaginary snowflake, a team of horses, or the flames of a warm fire in wintertime."

Through Lilian, Wu Han herself fell in love with Tchaikovsky's music all over again, and decided to record the music as a permanent document of the wonderful times she's had with her daughter. She was also eager to bring the music into the NPR studio and share it with radio and Internet audiences around the world.

About Wu Han

Wu Han began studying music at age 9, quickly accumulating top prizes at major competitions in her native Taiwan. She came to the U.S. to participate at the Marlboro Music Festival for two summers, and studied with Rudolf Serkin and Menahem Pressler.

Along with her husband David Finckel (cellist for the Emerson String Quartet), Wu Han leads a multifaceted career. She's a concert pianist, recording artist, music administrator and educator, and cultural entrepreneur. Wu Han and Finckel direct the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and are the founders and artistic directors of Music@Menlo, a chamber music festival in Silicon Valley. And, when they're not on the road as soloists or as a duo, they also run the CD production company Artistled, the first musician-directed and Web-based recording company, now in its 10th year.

Listen to the previous Favorite Session, or see our full archive.

Related Links

• Imogen Cooper: Beautiful Hands, Built for Bach
• The Joy and Pain in Beethoven's Big Fugue
• Dvorak's 'American Quartet' Via St. Petersburg
• Browse a Full Classical Archive
• Wu Han's ArtistLed Site
• Tchaikovsky Site

The brilliant but controversial Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan was born 100 years ago Saturday. To commemorate the occasion, his record labels have been busy reissuing much of Karajan's vast catalog of recordings and videos, which span from the mid-1940s until he died in 1989.

There's enough drama in Karajan's life to make a movie. In Hollywood, the pitch might go something like: "Ingenious young conductor from Mozart's hometown joins Nazi Party to further career, then bulldozes his way to the top, conducting Europe's powerhouse orchestras."

"There's this wonderful joke," violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter says, "where apparently Karajan landed in Berlin, and he took a cab and the cab driver asked him, 'Where to, maestro?' And he answered, 'Oh, it doesn't matter. They need me everywhere.'"

Mutter had read all about Karajan's glamorous lifestyle by the time she auditioned for him in 1977 at age 13 — the fast cars, yachts, airplanes and his immense musical empire. Karajan had a keen nose for talent, and he launched Mutter's international career.

Amassing Musical Power

Karajan bolted to the top in the mid-1950s, when he took over three monumental institutions: the Salzburg Festival, the Vienna State Opera and, most importantly, the Berlin Philharmonic, with a contract he demanded "for life."

But Karajan wasn't amassing power for power's sake. Mutter says he was obsessed with making sound that was perfectly beautiful.

"And with beauty he didn't mean Botox beauty," she says. "He meant beauty of soul, beauty of art."

Karajan rehearsed his orchestras for hours on end, and, when it came time for a concert or recording session, he could simply stand on the podium and conduct the musicians with his eyes closed, as if in a trance. Some compared the sheen and elegance of the so-called "Karajan sound" to a Rolls Royce.

"If you talk about Rolls Royce," Mutter says, "you should not forget the Ferrari underneath. If I think about the low strings — the double basses and the celli — it's just amazing how these guys could blow your hair off."

That rich, lush sound can be heard in any number of recordings that Karajan made of the ultra-romantic repertoire, including symphonies by Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler — and especially in the music of Richard Strauss. His tone poem called A Hero's Life is, on many levels, Karajan's own musical autobiography. Especially the section Strauss titled "The Hero's Adversaries."

Resistance in the Empire

Richard Osborne wrote the book Herbert von Karajan: A Life in Music. He says that as Karajan's power grew, so did the list of his enemies.

"They demonized him," Osborne says. "And the demonization really became quite serious in the late 1970s and early '80s. And then, of course, after he died and the laws of libel no longer applied, the most appalling things were said about him."

Fuel for the fires of hostility naturally came from Karajan's membership in the Nazi Party. He joined in 1935 to advance his blossoming career. But he wasn't interested in politics, and Hitler disliked him. Still, one might ask why Karajan stayed in Germany.

After the war, bogus information was circulated stating that Karajan had joined the party twice. Karajan's concerts were banned in Detroit and picketed in New York. Philadelphia Orchestra director Eugene Ormandy refused to shake Karajan's hand when the Berlin Philharmonic toured the U.S. in 1955.

Yet for all the stories of greed and egomania, Karajan was a master conductor. And, as with a film director's magic touch with actors, Karajan inspired his musicians — including James Galway, who became the principal flutist for the Berlin Philharmonic in 1969.

"I always played better for him than anybody else," Galway says. "He brought out the best in you all the time. The orchestra sat on the front of their chairs. If you watch any movie of the Berlin Philharmonic, nobody sits back."

Karajan had control over the Berlin Philharmonic for life. But his success and autocratic attitude slowly generated resentment within the orchestra. A series of rancorous battles over power in the early 1980s even resulted in a lawsuit. Karajan finally stepped down in April 1989, just three months before his death.

Karajan's final concert and recording, made that same month, was with his other orchestra: the Vienna Philharmonic. The music was close to Karajan's heart — Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 7, a shimmering monolith of sound.

So here we are, 100 years after Karajan's birth, and the record companies are again trotting out hundreds of reissues for one of their heroes. Whether Karajan was actually a hero will always be debated. What is undeniable, as Karajan said himself in an interview, is the man's singular quest to make beautiful music.

"This is the real great satisfaction in my life," Karajan said, "was that I was allowed to bring music to so many people."

It's been estimated that Karajan has sold more than 200 million LPs, CDs and videos worldwide. And that number is sure to only keep growing.

Related Links

• Karajan Site
• Herbert von Karajan's Top 5 Recordings
• Navigating Through the Toscanini Maze
• Marin Alsop on Music
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• The Artistry of Conductor James Levine
• Master Cellist, Conductor Rostropovich Dies at 80
• Remembering Conductor Carlos Kleiber
• Conductor Gergiev Interprets Shostakovich
• Conductor James DePreist

In the 1950s, more than one big-haired kid from the South shook up the world with the way he played music. Van Cliburn was a lanky and laconic 23-year-old from Texas when he won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow on Apr. 14, 1958.

It was at the height of the Cold War, with the U.S. and the Soviet Union posturing over Berlin, nuclear tests and the space race. The competition's judges reportedly asked Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev if they could really give first place to an American. Khrushchev replied, "Is he the best piano player? Then give it to him."

Cliburn returned home to a ticker-tape parade in New York, as well as international celebrity. His recording of Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 was the first classical recording to sell more than a million copies.

With his Moscow victory, Cliburn became something of a diplomat, striking a chord that connected common people from two countries that were bitter enemies. He'd never been outside the U.S. before his Moscow trip.

"The memories are so vivid," Cliburn told NPR's Scott Simon. "I remember the evening I arrived [in Moscow, on] March 26, 1958 — people were so friendly. One of the landmarks of the world that I had treasured the memory of seeing, when I was 5 years old, was the gorgeous photograph of the church of St. Basil. And so I asked this very nice lady from the ministry of culture if it was possible to pass by and see the church. She said, 'Of course,' and so we drove past it, and I felt like a dream had come true."

The Early Years

Cliburn's life at the piano began at age 3, when his mother found him at the keyboard, mimicking the piece of music that her piano student had just played.

She asked young Van if he wanted to play the piano. When he said, "Yes, mother," she said, "I'll teach you. You're not going to play by ear. You're going to know what you are doing."

Cliburn's mother, Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn, a pianist who studied with one of Franz Liszt's pupils, was his principal teacher until he entered Juilliard at age 17. He recalls that she always made him sing the music before he played it. During one of his return visits to Moscow, Cliburn invited her on stage to perform.

Cliburn's first public performance was a Bach Prelude and Fugue at age 4. He made his debut with the Houston Symphony at age 12. He also played clarinet in the Kilgore, Texas, high-school marching band. He recalls that because of his height and large hands, the school tried to recruit him for the basketball team.

In 1954, Cliburn won the Levintritt Competition, which opened doors to playing with orchestras in Cleveland, Denver and Pittsburgh, as well as with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Dmitri Mitropoulos.

After the Tchaikovsky Competition, Cliburn's schedule was hectic with tours and recordings. In 1962, a group of friends sponsored the first Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, in Fort Worth, Texas.

An Early Sabbatical

Cliburn went into semi-retirement in 1978, but returned to the White House to give a formal recital during a 1987 summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. It was the first time the famed pianist had taken the stage in nine years.

These days, Cliburn rarely plays in public, but still practices every day — often, he says, in the middle of the night.

"You feel like you're alone and the world's asleep, and it's very inspiring. I was never really the type that needed the stage. I love music. I love listening to it. But when you just listen, you can be 100 percent; when you have to serve music, you must be thinking of others, not yourself."

Related Links

• Van Cliburn Foundation Site
• Cliburn bio
• The New York Philharmonic Plays Pyongyang
• See a full archive of classical stories
• Tchaikovsky: Concerto No. 1
• Brahms: Concerto No. 2
• Beethoven: Concerto No. 5
• Cliburn at the White House

Fifty years ago, a tall, curly-haired Texan pianist named Van Cliburn was given the full hero's treatment upon his arrival in New York: a ticker-tape parade, complete with a declaration by the mayor. How was it that a classical musician could inspire this kind of idolatry?

It all started with Tchaikovsky — specifically the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, held in Moscow in 1958. It was part of a movement toward a thaw in the Cold War, after a period of complete dissociation between two superpowers: the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

Part of that thaw was a cultural exchange. The idea was to invite international musicians to compete with Russians for a grand prize, and to show off Soviet accomplishments in the arts.

A group of 50 pianists from 19 countries went to Moscow, including a few Americans. One was Van Cliburn. He had won an American competition, the Leventritt Award, at age 20, only to drift into an unremarkable career.

But his prodigious talent had not gone unrecognized by the jury — this being no ordinary jury. Among them: Russian pianists Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter, composers Dmitri Kabalevsky, Sir Arthur Bliss, and Dmitri Shostakovich, chairman of the competition.

Cliburn famously tore into Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto, awing the Soviet judges. But they remained unsure whether they could give the prize to an American. As the popularly recounted story goes, the judges sought Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's approval. "Is he the best?" Khrushchev asked. The judges replied yes. "Then give him the prize," Khrushchev said.

Sara Fishko examines how 50 years ago, a classical pianist made history.

Related Links

• 2007 Tchaikovsky Competition Web site
• The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
• A Taste of Van Cliburn
• Russian Pianist Wins the Van Cliburn Competition
• Van Cliburn: Treasuring Moscow After 50 Years
• Footage from Van Cliburn's 1958 Award-Winning Performance (YouTube)
• Van Cliburn Plays Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in Moscow, 1962 (YouTube)
• Piano Pathways: Daniel Pollack, 50 Years Later

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades is a first-rate example of great literature that's further enlightened when set to great music.

The opera is based on a groundbreaking story by Alexander Pushkin. In it, he wrote that "two obsessions can no more exist in the same mind than two bodies can exist in the same space." If you doubt that statement, or think it's for the best, just read the story — or have a listen to Tchaikovsky's bleak, operatic version of the tale. Then think again.

Pushkin's unfortunate hero is a fellow called Hermann, who seems to have a dysfunctional soul. He observes the social lives of his friends, but stays to himself and won't participate. When a beautiful woman offers him love and companionship, he brutally exploits her for personal gain. In short, Pushkin's Hermann isn't exactly a barrel of laughs. Still, his ultimate fate does seem like a natural byproduct of his flawed personality.

Tchaikovsky's take on his story is every bit as grim as the original — and maybe grimmer, thanks to an extra layer of sentiment. In the opera, Hermann isn't quite such a cold fish — at least not at first. When he meets Lisa the two instantly fall in love, and he's overjoyed. But that love gets tangled up with obsessive greed and, in a way, the opera becomes even more tragic than Pushkin's story. Tchaikovsky gives Hermann every chance to live a meaningful and satisfying life — which in turn makes his self-destruction feel wildly irrational and sadly unnecessary.

On World of Opera, host Lisa Simeone brings us a production of The Queen of Spades from one of the world's great musical venues, the Vienna State Opera, with renowned tenor Neil Shicoff starring as Hermann.

Related Links

• The Vienna State Opera
• Pushkin's Original 'Queen of Spades'
• Tenor Neil Shicoff

It sounds like a recipe for operatic disaster. First you choose an obscure opera by a composer best known for symphonies and concertos. Then you bring in a 70-year-old soprano to sing the lead role — a familiar, historical character who is supposed to be a teenager!

The result is a guaranteed, box-office flop, right? Not necessarily — not if the soprano is legendary for her intelligence and artistic integrity as well as her voice, and not if the opera is by one of the most popular of all romantic composers, Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky.

That's the combination the Washington National Opera and its General Director, Placido Domingo, put onstage at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and it was a rousing success. The opera was Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans, which tells the story of Joan of Arc. The soprano was one of the greatest of her generation, Mirella Freni.

When Freni arrived in Washington to portray Joan, her career had already spanned 50 years. She was still sounding great, still much in demand, and was still exploring new roles — including Joan of Arc.

As it turned out, the production was far more than a critical success and a box-office smash. Though they didn't know it at the time, Kennedy Center audiences had witnessed operatic history. Afterward, Freni retired from the stage, making the Washington National Opera's Maid of Orleans her final opera production. NPR's World of Opera gives Freni's countless fans a chance to hear it, and her, one more time.

Related Links

• The Washington National Opera
• More about Tchaikovsky
• The Historical Joan of Arc