To my best friend

by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky

'To my best friend': thus Tchaikovsky dedicated his original and emotionally vibrant Fourth Symphony to his newly found correspondent, Nadezhda von Meck. Their correspondence started at the end of 1876, when Tchaikovsky was in need of funds. On the recommendation of Nikolai Rubinstein, Director of the Moscow Conservatoire where Tchaikovsky was a professor, Nadezhda von Meck generously commissioned Tchaikovsky to arrange some of his smaller pieces for violin and piano. In this way began their extraordinary pen-relationship, in which each seemed to bare the soul before the other, Nadezhda von Meck sincerely and increasingly gushingly, Tchaikovsky less sincerely to begin with, but much more so before the elapse of many months. Each was determined never to meet the other in the flesh for fear of destroying their very special relationship . The years covered by the present book are by far the most important in the correspondence. They cover the period of Tchaikovsky's tempestuously abortive