Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky composed the scores of three ballets: Swan Lake, first staged at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1877, and The Sleeping Beauty (1890) and The Nutcracker (1892), both written for the Imperial Theatres in St Petersburg. The Swan Lake score was heavily cut and rearranged in later productions, and the version widely known in the twentieth century derives from one prepared after his death; all three ballets remain staples of the repertoire.

In 1874 Nikolay Rubinstein criticised the First Piano Concerto harshly, and Leopold Auer, to whom the Violin Concerto had been offered, declined to play it as too difficult; after its 1881 Vienna performance the critic Eduard Hanslick wrote a hostile review. Both concertos are now among the best-loved works in the repertoire, alongside the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth ('Pathetique') symphonies, the last premiered under his own baton in 1893, and the 1812 Overture.

Two of Tchaikovsky's operas are settings of Pushkin. Eugene Onegin, which he called 'lyrical scenes', was composed in 1877-78 and first staged in full by Moscow Conservatory students in March 1879, with its first professional production at the Bolshoi in January 1881. The Queen of Spades premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in December 1890, after he had written it in Florence in 44 days.

On Christmas Eve 1874 Tchaikovsky played his new piano concerto for Nikolay Rubinstein and Nikolay Hubert, hoping for technical advice. By Tchaikovsky's own account, written three years later to Nadezhda von Meck, Rubinstein condemned the work harshly and said he would perform it if it were revised; Tchaikovsky answered that he would not alter a single note. He published it as it stood and dedicated it to Hans von Bulow, who gave its first performance in Boston in October 1875; Tchaikovsky later made revisions of his own, in 1879 and around 1889.

The episode is consistent with the profile's independent thinking: he held to his own judgement against the most authoritative pianist in Moscow, although his later revisions show he did not treat the concerto as beyond change. Independent Thinking

Tchaikovsky destroyed the scores of several early works. He cut bars from the symphonic fantasia Fatum before its 1869 premiere and later destroyed the full score; he reused parts of the opera Undina in other works and then destroyed that score; and he destroyed most of the score of his first opera, The Voyevoda. In 1891 he tore up the score of a later symphonic ballad, also called The Voyevoda, after hearing it performed. Fatum, the ballad and most of the opera were reconstructed after his death, largely from surviving orchestral parts; of Undina only extracts survive.

This pattern is consistent with the profile's perfectionism, with the loss of the originals as its visible cost. Tchaikovsky Research notes that for Fatum it is unclear whether Balakirev's criticism or a changed view of the piece lay behind the destruction. Perfectionism

Tchaikovsky had repeatedly said he could not conduct, and in October 1886 he wrote to von Meck that the very thought of the podium made him tremble. In December 1886 he took his first orchestral rehearsal, and on 19/31 January 1887 he conducted the premiere of his revised opera Cherevichki at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. By the end of 1887 he had set out on a first European tour as a conductor, and over the next six years he conducted his own music in Prague, Paris, London and, in 1891, at the opening week of the new Music Hall in New York, later called Carnegie Hall.

The change illustrates the profile's adaptability: a self-described reluctance gave way to a sustained new public role. The difficulty is self-reported, and Walter Damrosch, who hosted him in 1891, wrote that he found the work tiring but that the players followed his intentions eagerly. Adaptability