André Tchaikowsky

André Tchaikowsky was born on 1 November 1935 in Warsaw as Robert Andrzej Krauthammer. By the age of three-and-ahalf, he could read in Polish, German and Russian, and at the age of four his mother began to teach him piano. His grandmother Celina immediately began to plan for his future, announcing that he would become the best and most famous pianist in the world. He was only four when the Jews of Warsaw were forced into the ghetto. He survived the war thanks to the ingenuity of his grandmother, who obtained false documents for him made in the name Andrzej Robert Jan Czajkowski. She then arranged hiding places for him for the next three years in at least ten different locations until the war ended. Although Celina obtained the false documents also for his mother, Felicia, she decided to stay in the ghetto (she was by then married for the second time), and was murdered in Treblinka in August 1942 only a few weeks after her son escaped.

After the war Tchaikowsky studied at the State Music Conservatoire in Łódź, Paris Conservatoire, and the State High Music School in Warsaw (today The Fryderyk Chopin University of Music). He took part in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1955, where the jury awarded him eighth place (out of 77 competitors from 25 countries). He was also given special award as the youngest Polish pianist (he was nineteen at the time). At the competition, Tchaikowsky met the famous Polish pianist Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982), who took considerable interest in the young musician and recommended that he take part in the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels in 1956. This time Tchaikowsky was awarded third prize, coming behind Vladimir Ashkenazy and John Browning. The Queen Elizabeth Competition brought international engagements and Rubinstein’s support.

Composing fulfilled Tchaikowsky creatively, and it was the one area of his profession where he never procrastinated: on the contrary, he had to force himself not to compose when on tour or when preparing for concerts because composition entirely took hold of him. Because he could not dedicate himself to composition full-time, his legacy is small. But that does not mean that it is unimportant. Apart from two piano concertos, two string quartets and a number of compositions for voice, piano, and other instruments, his opera The Merchant of Venice is a profound and monumental work that makes a significant contribution to the twentieth-century operatic repertoire.

Tchaikowsky died on 26 June 1982 in Sir Michael Sobell Hospice in Oxford, UK.

Anastasia Belina

(Based on the album's biographical notes)