Nadezhda Von Meck - Relationship With Tchaikovsky

Relationship With Tchaikovsky

In 1877, one of the musicians she supported was violinist Iosif Kotek, with whom she played chamber music. Kotek was a former student and friend of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, recommended to von Meck by Nikolai Rubinstein. She had already been impressed with Tchaikovsky's music such as his symphonic poem The Tempest, and she asked Rubinstein at length about him. Perhaps urged by Kotek, von Meck wrote to the composer.

Introducing herself as a fervent admirer, she commissioned some pieces for violin and piano to play at her estate. Tchaikovsky, perhaps already knowledgeable of her reputation as a patron, quickly obliged. One of her first commissions was for a funeral march. They continued writing even as his marriage followed its brief though torturous course. As their relationship developed, she subsequently provided him with a financial allowance large enough (6,000 rubles a year) that he could leave his professorship at the Moscow Conservatory to focus on creative work full-time. (This was a small fortune. A minor government official in those days had to support his family on 300-400 rubles a year.)

Tchaikovsky was grateful for von Meck's financial support. Nevertheless, it created some emotional discomfort and an underlying tension. They both eventually handled this awkwardness with considerable delicacy. Still, Tchaikovsky could not help feeling vaguely uncomfortable about the favors with which she showered him. He wrote to her frankly about this: "... in my relations with you there is the ticklish circumstance that every time we write to one another, money appears on the scene."