Tchaikovsky and Antonina - Violin concerto - Mov 1

In mid-March 1877, the brilliant Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky received a letter from an unknown woman in which she let him know her deep admiration for his work. Then others followed, more and more passionate. By the time, the 37-year-old composer had a full career already, so, letters from fans did not drive him mad –receiving letters had become a daily event.
Pyotr Ilyich, a sensitive person with a tendency to depression and a subject of recurrent nervous crisis, did not dare to contact the stranger. And it was not only a fear of gossip: the Muscovite society in which he lived had been commenting, sotto voce but sometimes acrimoniously, on some improper behaviours of the maestro. The issue was going far beyond that. The author was just one step away from seeing his manhood openly questioned.

For that very reason, finally, he took the step. Pyotr Ilyich ended up meeting Antonina Miliukova, who turned out to be a 28-year-old lady, moderately educated and with pleasant features and easy smile. Piotr Ilyich then took the final step. Just four months after receiving the first letter from his unknown admirer, Antonina and Pyotr Ilyich were married. The composer took Antonina as his wife and, in passing, as a barrier against the increasing rumours that fostered the suspicion of sexual misconduct.

The decision had disastrous results. For two never-ending months, Pyotr Ilyich was not able to approach the marriage bed... He did not have the strength to do so, and the marriage ended right there. They decided to separate, without grudges.
The composer fell into a depression of such magnitude that he was about to commit suicide. Antonina, on the other hand, began again to send letters to other celebrities to whom she lied, as to Pyotr Ilyich, about her noble origin, and whom she always ended up falling in love with. Antonina also had something about it and ended her days in an insane asylum.

Violin Concerto - First movement
Despite the disintegration of his marriage, in the following months Tchaikovsky completed the opera Eugene Onegin, orchestrated his Fourth Symphony, and composed the Violin Concerto.
The later was composed in March of the following year, exactly one year after the first letter of Antonina, in a resort on a shore of a lake, in Switzerland, where Pyotr Ilyich had gone to recover from the depression.
The work, in three movements, was initially rejected even by great virtuosos who believed it was unplayable; others found some of it impracticable.

The first movement lasts approximately 20 minutes. The abbreviated performance presented here belongs to the 1947 movie Carnegie Hall, with one of the most notable violinists of the 20th century, the Lithuanian maestro Jascha Heifetz, who plays himself in the film.
The more recent Franco-Russian film, The Concert, features a final scene with a mixture of the first and third movements, with a somewhat disastrous orchestra (according to the plot) that happily ends joining up.

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