Volume 1 Number 4
July 7, 1995
Tchaikovsky Discovers America
Kalman, Esther
Toronto: Lester Publishing, 1994. 40pp, hard-cover, $16.95.
ISBN 1-895555-82-5
Grades 4 to 6/ Ages 8 and Up
Review by T.S. Casaubon.
excerpt:
Later, as I walked along the promenade [at Niagara
Falls], I heard a voice behind me. It was Mr. Tchaikovsky, but I could
barely make out what he was saying through the crashing of the falls and
the noise of the vendors trying to sell us picture postcards and other
souvenirs. In my loudest voice I asked Mr. Tchaikovsky if he wanted to buy
something to press in his diary to remind him of his trip. But he said that
he had no need of mementos, that his words alone would form the memories
that would be pressed between the covers. ``When I read my diary back in
Russia," he said, ``I shall remember the sights and the sounds and the
smells of America. But here in America, I am remembering
Russia."
Deservedly listed among the ``Notables" of the last year, Tchaikovsky
Discovers America
is a follow-up to the successful Beethoven Lives Upstairs.
Both books are published to accompany recordings from Susan Hammond's
Classical Kids series; introductions to great music by looking their
composers from a very personal and human angle. Obviously the book can't
contain the music, but the triumph of Tchaikovsky Discovers
America is that while it recalls the music, and might even inspire
a reader to seek it out, it lives on its own.
Kalman based the story on Tchaikovsky's actual 1891 visit to
America to attend the opening of Carnegie Hall. The composer kept a diary
of his visit, and it is this diary that inspires eleven-year-old Jenny
Petroff to keep one of her own, which she begins with her account of how
she came to know the great man.
Jenny is an American, but her family is from Russia, where her
father was a count; in America, however, he has made his fortune running a
railroad. So Jenny is not quite the ordinary person she feels in
Tchaikovsky's presence, but her background does give her the chance meet
him on the train, one of the wonders of the New World he admires, (``this
train! There is even a barbershop on the train!"), and, because she speaks
Russian, to become his friend.
Of course, the great man touches Jenny's family too, who have lost
not only a title, but Russia itself. When Tchaikovsky conducts at Carnegie
Hall, Jenny's mother cries because the music is so Russian; after he meets
the composer, her father pines for the scent of lilac and the fields of
yellow flowers. ``I did not know that grown-ups could get homesick," Jenny
writes. ``I thought about the fields of yellow flowers and, although I have
never seen them, it was as if I remembered them too."
In many ways, the book is a meditation on loss: meeting Tchaikovsky
lets Jenny understand her family's loss; talking to him and hearing his
music brings out Jenny's desire to be a ballerina, which she is already too
old to become; there are reminders of the composer's age (``but when he
stood up to conduct he was like a young man again"), suggestive of the
death that will come only two years after this visit to America. And making
friends with the great man is itself a gift that can only lead to the loss
-- the parting that closes the story:
Today Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, my friend,
sails away from
New York back to Russia.
He is the first person I have written about in my diary.
I wonder if he
has put me in his.
But if Jenny learns about loss and sadness, she also learns the gifts
they can carry of music and memory.
The fourteen colour illustrations, by husband-and-wife team Laura
Fernandez and Rick Jacobson, are excellent, and surprising in their
variety: intimate domestic scenes, vistas of Russia, a vision from
Swan Lake; and two great dark, dramatic spreads -- one of
Tchaikovsky conducting at Carnegie Hall, and one of him taking leave of his
friend Jenny in front of the tremendous, smoking train that brought them
together.
Grades 4 to 6/ Ages 8 and Up
Highly Recommended.
T.S. Casaubon is a Winnipeg-based freelance writer
Copyright © 1995 the Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without permission.
Published by
The Manitoba Library Association
ISSN 1201-9364
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