David Brown's Tchaikovsky biog was republished in paperback as 4 volumes in 2, by Victor Gollancz - a little more manageable than the hardback set. I picked up a copy several years ago for £20 in a superb secondhand/antiquarian bookshop in Bedford, situated rather weirdly nowhere near the town centre but on a residential street. You would find books there you wouldn't in Travis & Emory in London. (A lot of John Drummond's books ended up there after his death.) I don't know why the Brown is not in print because it's the best book on the composer by a country mile. Brown's the only person who has ever managed to change my view of the "Little Russian".
The Tawaststjerna Sibelius is also a favourite of mine as unsurpassed musical biographies go. That's in print (£75, 3.vol) from faber & faber.
And with this year being the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rachmaninoff I do recommend Barrie Martyn's, Rachmaninoff: Composer, Pianist, Conductor. Long, majestic, and authoritative - and In print, too, only costs £42 on Amazon!
Rambling, too...as usual.
My apologies if this is already common knowledge but I wanted to draw attention to a free access discography of Tchaikovsky's music. It lays claim to covering 'recordings' from 1890 onwards. For me it's a fascinating document - no doubt given the proliferation of PIT recordings the compilers are on a hiding to nothing but even so this impresses.
Try it out at
https://www.tchaikovsky-research.net/files/tchaikovskdisc-2022-04.pdf
This can be added to the free pdf discogs at CRQ Editions and MWI's own national discographies.
The author/compilers of the Tchaikovsky are Brett Langston and Uwe Sauerteig.
It is up to date as of November 2022 and the authors say they welcome corrections.
While on the subject of this composer I should add that I found much to appreciate and enjoy in David Brown's huge 3 or 4 volume study of PIT and his music. This was one of my epic reads during lockdown along with a few handsome Phaidon press biographies (Britten, Stravinsky) and on a non=musical front Theodore Dreiser's An Am,erican Tragedy. I know that it (the Brown) has been out for decades but even so it makes a good read. Apologies for rambling. Rob
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