It is impossible to give in detail the programme drawn up for each day of the composer’s visit to Prague. He made an almost royal progress to all the chief places of interest. On one occasion, entering the “Rathaus” while a session was being held, the entire body of members rose to greet him. One evening he was serenaded by the famous Choral Union “Hlahol.” He listened to the songs from his balcony, and afterwards came down to thank the singers in person. An offer, made in the course of his speech, to compose something expressly for the Society was received with loud cheering. On February 6th (18th) he was invited to the Students’ Union and presented to the students. In his diary he speaks of this as “a very solemn and touching ceremony.” Accompanied by cries of “Slava!” and “Na Sdrava!” he was next led off to the public rehearsal of the concert. The evening wound up with a brilliant soirée at the Town Club (Meschtschanska Beseda).
The first concert itself took place on February 7th (19th), in the “Rudolfinum.” The programme consisted entirely of Tchaikovsky’s music, and included: (1) Overture, Romeo and Juliet; (2) Concerto for Pianoforte (B♭ minor), played by Siloti; (3) Elégie from the Third Suite; (4) Violin Concerto, played by Halir; (5), Overture, “1812.” Of all these works the last-named excited the greatest applause. Tchaikovsky sums up his impressions as follows: “Undoubtedly it was the most eventful day of my life. I have become so attached to these good Bohemians ... and with good reason! Heavens, what enthusiasm! Such as I have never known, but in my own dear Russia!”
Two days later, on February 9th (21st), the second concert was given in the foyer of the Opera House. This time the programme comprised: (1) Serenade for strings; (2) Variations from the Third Suite; (3) Pianoforte Solos (Siloti); (4) Overture, “1812.” The ovations were even more hearty, and the gifts more costly, than at the first concert. “An overwhelming success,” says Tchaikovsky in his diary. “A moment of absolute bliss. But only one moment.”
On the evening of February 10th (22nd), sped by farewell addresses, and smothered in flowers, the composer took leave of the festive city of Prague.
Although the chief object of Tchaikovsky’s tour was to make his works more widely known in Europe, and to carry them beyond the confines of his native land, he combined with this aim—although in a lesser degree—the desire to see for himself the extent of his reputation and to reap some profit by it. Distrustful and modest as he was, he made no great demands in this respect, and even the appreciation he received in Germany quite surpassed his expectations. The honour done him in Prague far outstripped his wildest dreams. These ten days were the culminating point of Tchaikovsky’s fame during his lifetime. Allowing that nine-tenths of the ovations lavished on him were really intended for Russia, even then, he could not fail to be flattered that he was the chosen recipient of the sympathy of the Czechs for the Russians, since it proved that he was already famous as a composer. It was flattering, too, to feel that he was honoured by a nation which could be regarded as one of the most musical in the world. It pleased him that Prague—the first place to recognise the genius of Mozart—should pay him honour, thus uniting his fate with that of the illustrious German. It touched Tchaikovsky deeply to feel that those who gave him one “moment of absolute happiness” were descendants of the same race which, long ago, had given a portion of joy to him who was his teacher and model, both as man and as musician. This strange coincidence was the most flattering event of his life—the highest honour to which he had ever ventured to aspire.
Simultaneously with this climax of his renown, came one of the bitterest experiences of his life. The Russian Press did not give a line to this triumph of a native composer in Prague. He felt this to be a profound injury, which surprised and mortified him the more, because all these triumphs in his life were regarded as important events even by the Czechs themselves. It was most painful to realise that Russia, for whom the greater part of these honours were intended, knew nothing whatever about them; that on account of the attitude of the Press towards him, personally, this warm sympathy, meant for his countrymen as a whole, would never be known to them, nor evoke any response.
Quite another kind of ovation awaited Tchaikovsky in Paris. Here, too, his success surpassed his expectations; but the sympathy of the French capital differed as widely in character from that which was shown him in Prague as the Czechs differ from the French in their musical tastes and their relations towards the Russians. There is no country in which music is better loved, or more widely understood, than in Bohemia. Nor is there any other nation which feels such appreciation for all that is Russian; not merely as a matter of passing fashion, but on account of actual kinship between the Eastern and Western Slav. In Bohemia, therefore, both as a musician and a native of Russia, Tchaikovsky had been received with a warmth and sincerity hardly to be expected from France. It is true a little political feeling influenced his reception in Paris; it was just the beginning of the Franco-Russian rapprochement, so that everything Russian was the fashion of the hour. Many French people, who were not in the least musical, regarded it as their duty to express some appreciation of Tchaikovsky—simply because he was a Russian. All this, like the French sympathy itself, had no solid foundation of national affinity, but merely sprang from an ephemeral political combination. The enthusiastic, explosive, but fleeting, craze of the French for all that was Russian showed itself in hats à la Kronstadt, in shouting the Russian national anthem simultaneously with the “Marseillaise,” in ovations to the clown Durov, and in a “patronising” interest for our art and literature—as species of curiosities—rather than in the hearty relations of two countries drawn together by true affinity of aims and sympathies. Naturally the festivities of Kronstadt, Toulon, and Paris led to no real appreciation of Poushkin, Gogol, Ostrovsky, Glinka, Dargomijsky, or Serov, only, at the utmost, to a phase of fashion, thanks to which Tolstoi and Dostoievsky found a certain superficial vogue, without being understood in their fullest value. Tchaikovsky was also a modern, and this lent a kind of brilliance to his reception in Paris; but it was purely external.... It may truly be said that all Prague welcomed the composer; whereas in Paris only the musicians and amateurs, a few newspapers in favour of the Franco-Russian alliance, and that crowd which is always in pursuit of novelty, were interested in Tchaikovsky’s visit.
Time has proved the respective value of these ovations. Although it is now fifteen years since Tchaikovsky visited Prague, his operas still hold their own in the repertory of the theatre, and his symphonic music is still as well known there and as much loved as in Russia. In Paris, on the contrary, not only are his works rarely given, either on the stage or in the concert-room, but his name—although it has gained in renown all over Europe—is not considered worthy of inclusion among those which adorn the programmes of the Conservatoire concerts. And yet those who are at the head of this institution are the same men who honoured him in 1888. Is not this a proof of that hidden but smouldering antipathy which the French really feel for the Russian spirit—that spirit which Tchaikovsky shares in common with his great predecessors in music, and with the representatives of all that Russia has produced of lofty and imperishable worth?
Tchaikovsky arrived in Paris on February 12th (24th), and went almost straight from the station to the rehearsal of his Serenade for strings, which—conducted by the composer—was to be played by Colonne’s orchestra at a soirée given by M. N. Benardaky.
N. Benardaky had married one of the three sisters Leibrock, operatic artists well known to the Russian public. He had a fine house in Paris, frequented by the élite of the artistic world. As a wealthy patron of art—and as a fellow-countryman—he inaugurated the festivities in Tchaikovsky’s honour by this musical evening.