Nadezhda Kondratyeva
Daughter of Tchaikovsky's friends Nikolay Kondratyev and Mariya Kondratyeva (b. 1865; d. 1940), born Nadezhda Nikolayevna Kondratyeva (Надежда Николаевна Кондратьева), but known to the composer as Dinochka or Dina.
Tchaikovsky had always been very fond of Kondratyev's daughter Nadezhda (whom he had first met as a little girl and called "Dinochka" ever since), and in 1893 he would dedicate one of his last piano pieces to her: Valse-bluette (No. 11 of the Eighteen Pieces, Op. 72). Nadezhda wrote some remarkably vivid memoirs about the composer, describing his stays at their estate in Nizy during the 1870s. She also said the following about her father:
My father, N. D. Kondratyev, famous for his friendship with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, was a very clever and all-round educated person. He passionately loved music, literature, and painting; he read all the journals, spoke many languages, travelled a great deal, and read all the works written by Russian and foreign authors. He was bound by the very closest ties of friendship not only to Pyotr Ilyich, but also to Modest Ilyich [...] And as for my father, there was no dearer person and better friend on the whole wide world than Pyotr Ilyich" [1].
Dedications
In 1893, Tchaikovsky dedicated his piano piece Valse-bluette — No. 11 of the Eighteen Pieces, Op. 72 — ""à Melle. Dina Kondratieff"".
Correspondence with Tchaikovsky
No letters from Tchaikovsky to Nadezhda Kondratyeva have survived, but 6 letters from Kondratyeva to the composer, dating from 1886 to 1893, are preserved in the Tchaikovsky State Memorial Musical Museum-Reserve at Klin (a4, Nos. 1648–1653).
Notes and References
- ↑ Quoted in the notes to the memoirs of Nadezhda Kondratyeva in Воспоминания о П. И. Чайковском (1980), p. 378.
