On the heels of releasing his debut solo album, Strokes-frontman Julian Casablancas is purportedly preparing a laser light show for his upcoming live UK tour. Casablancas told NME that he is planning on delivering a “Pink Floyd” inspired show to his UK fans. Casablancas released the album Phrazes For the Young last month. [NME.com]

Jay-Z performed with U2 last night during the Irish band’s Berlin appearance for MTV’s 16th annual European Music Video Awards. Jay-Z joined U2 for a performance of the band’s classic cut “Sunday Bloody Sunday”. [Stereogum.com]

AFI lead-singer Davey Havok and guitarist Jade Puget are set to release the second effort in the duo’s electronica side-project Blaqk Audio. Having recently released AFI’s 2009 effort Crash Love, Havok and Puget are ready to promote thier sophomore effort Bright Black Heaven after AFI finishes its tour. Blaqk Audio released its debut album Cexcells in 2007. [Billboard.com]

Legendary old-school rappers the Fat Boys are launching a clothing line. Their T-shirts will be available at retailers like Urban Outfitters and Hot Topic soon. The group will also be performing a comeback show in Detroit at an undisclosed time and are working on something called “Fat Boys Weekend,” which will take place in 2010. Sadly, Darren Robinson, aka The Human Beat Box, won’t be performing with them due to his tragic death back in 1995. [HipHopDX]

“I grew up in a quiet spot and was saturated from earliest childhood with the wonderful beauty of Russian popular song.”

– Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky

 
Getting Off to a Good Start

Unless you were fortunate enough to grow up in a household that listened to a lot of classical music, you might feel that it is quite hard to pick up casually and must require extraordinary intellectual effort. Of course, knowledge of any kind of music doesn’t come automatically, and you have to put some time and effort into listening to classical music to get rewards from it, just as you would with rock, blues, jazz, country, and so on. Yet there are other challenges that can make classical music seem particularly daunting. First, listening to anything and everything randomly, either online or at a music library, may bring about confusion, because of the sheer quantity of classical music that exists and the variety of styles and periods it’s associated with, from Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque to Classical, Romantic, and Modern. It’s easy to get lost. Second, you can squander a fortune on buying classical music, even out of the mid-line and budget bins, especially without knowing what’s worth hearing more than once. Third, if you lack a trusted guide, you may begin to feel overwhelmed by all the choices and quit out of frustration. If you aren’t lucky enough to have ready access to the best recordings, vast disposable income, or a knowledgeable teacher or friend to make suggestions, where on earth do you begin? To whom should you turn in your time of greatest need?

Meet Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky (1840 -1893), one of the great Russian composers from the Romantic period, a perennial favorite among classical fans, and possibly the best pathfinder to classical music. Although he demonstrated talent in childhood and received music lessons early, Tchaikovsky began his professional career as a composer relatively late in life, starting out as a lawyer, but changing goals in his twenties to become a professor of music in Moscow. He achieved an artistic breakthrough with the premiere in 1877 of his ballet The Swan Lake, and proved to the public that he had a phenomenal grasp of melody, dance forms, and orchestral colors. He went on to even greater successes, and despite suffering severe doubts over his music and bouts of nearly suicidal depression over his homosexuality, he persevered and was acknowledged as a great composer in his lifetime. Tchaikovsky died ten days after the premiere of his Symphony No. 6 in B minor, “Pathétique,” which many regard as the ne plus ultra of his intensely personal expression.

Tchaikovsky is quite approachable from the start because his music is instantly memorable, and it’s easy to appreciate because of its expressive directness. You don’t need to understand the finer points of music theory to know that Tchaikovsky’s music is usually quite dramatic, exciting, moving, and abundantly tuneful, and much of it is brilliantly orchestrated. It also helps that Tchaikovsky composed pieces in all the available forms of his time, so it’s just as easy to find operas, concertos, symphonies, suites, and other large scale works as it is to find short character pieces, songs, and waltzes in his catalog. Beginners will also find it useful to know that Tchaikovsky is one of the most prolifically recorded composers in history, so there’s really no shortage of albums of his work. Ultimately, there are many paths to take with Tchaikovsky, and all of them will lead you deeper into classical music.

Accessibility and Memorability

Anyone entering the wide field of classical music should begin with learning tunes they’ll remember on one or two hearings. Almost everyone knows something by Tchaikovsky, even if it’s just a snippet of music they’ve heard in a film or on television. Once you have a firm grasp of a Tchaikovsky melody, it’s easy to comprehend the other parts of a composition as music that highlights it and makes it more dramatic, varies the theme in some interesting ways, or offers contrasting material to create tension or movement. Much of Tchaikovsky’s music is constructed around long, song-like melodies, and while he used all the developmental techniques and formal structures that he inherited from the Classical era of Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven, his melodies are the soul of virtually everything he wrote. Knowing this pretty much makes everything else fall into place.

Below are some samples of the best loved melodies in Tchaikovsky’s ouevre.

Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano - Piano Concerto No. 1: I. Allegro ma non troppo

Herbert von Karajan, conductor - Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture: Love Scene

Utrecht String Quartet - String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 11: 2. Andante cantabile

Valery Gergiev, conductor - The Nutcracker: Act 2, Pas de deux

Valery Gergiev, conductor - Eugen Onegin: Valse

Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano - The Seasons: June (Barcarole)

A Comprehensive Approach

Tchaikovsky wrote in virtually all the forms of his day, so there are many ways to learn about the varieties of classical music from his examples. Even though he is considered a late Romantic master, Tchaikovsky’s favorite period was the Classical era, and his idol was Mozart. Bearing this in mind, we can see that Tchaikovsky closely followed western musical tradition, and he composed concertos, symphonies, suites, and chamber music that fit the basic molds of familiar classical forms. But he was a child of his own time, so he also composed in the new Romantic forms as well, such as tone poems, programmatic overtures, and character pieces. Of course, Tchaikovsky achieved his greatest fame as a composer of ballets, and The Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker are definitive masterpieces.

Mstislav Rostropovich, conductor - The Swan Lake, suite
1. Scène
2. Valse
3. Danse des cygnes
4. Scène
5. Danse hongroise
6. Scène finale

Mstislav Rostropovich, conductor - The Sleeping Beauty, suite
1. Introduction
2. Pas d’action (Rose Adagio)
3. Pas de caractère
4. Panorama
5. Valse

Mstislav Rostropovich, conductor - The Nutcracker, suite
1. Ouverture miniature
2. Marche
3. Danse de la Fée-Dragée
4. Danse russe (Trépak)
5. Danse arabe
6. Danse chinoise
7. Danse des mirlitons
8. Valse des fleurs

Like the violin concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major was his only full-length concerto for the instrument. It is enormously popular and regarded as one of the top vehicles for virtuosi.

Joshua Bell, violin - Violin Concerto in D major
1. Allegro moderato
2. Canzonetta
3. Finale. Allegro vivacissimo

Of Tchaikovsky’s six symphonies, the last three are the most frequently performed and essential listening for anyone interested in his music. (The first three symphonies are charmers, but they are best heard after gaining a better understanding of the mature masterpieces.)

Herbert von Karajan, conductor - Symphony No. 4 in F minor
1. Andante sostenuto
2. Andantino
3. Scherzo
4. Allegro con fuoco

Herbert von Karajan, conductor - Symphony No. 5 in E minor
1. Andante - Allegro con anima
2. Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza
3. Valse. Allegro moderato
4. Finale: Andante maestoso

Herbert von Karajan, conductor - Symphony No. 6 in B minor, “Pathétique”
1. Adagio
2. Allegro con grazia
3. Allegro molto vivace
4. Finale: Adagio lamentoso

There are several other works which have ensured Tchaikovsky’s reputation and pleased audiences for over a century. Some of these are regularly found as excerpts on greatest hits compilations, but be sure to accept only complete performances.

Arthur Fiedler, conductor - Capriccio Italien

Valery Gergiev, conductor – Slavonic March

Valery Gergiev, conductor -1812 Festival Overture

Fionnuala Hunt, conductor - Serenade for strings
1. Pezzo in forma di sonatine
2. Valse
3. Elegia
4. Finale

Raphael Ensemble - Souvenir de Florence
1. Allegro con spirito
2. Adagio cantabile con moto
3. Allegretto moderato
4. Allegro vivace

Tchaikovsky’s operas, choral music, and songs are somewhat less familiar in the west than his instrumental pieces, largely because some acquaintance with the Russian language is needed for appreciation, and some of this music wasn’t widely available on recordings in the United States until the last decades of the 20th century.

Olga Borodina, mezzo-soprano - Eugen Onegin: Act 1, Scene 1
Scene
Aria

Dmitri Hvorostovsky, baritone - The Queen of Spades: Act 1, Scene 1, Ballad

Corydon Singers - Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom: Our Father

Dmitri Hvorostovsky, baritone - None But the Lonely Heart

Widespread Availability

As one of the most popular composers of all time, Tchaikovsky receives a great amount of attention in the concert hall and in recording studios. Some might say too much. At a time when fewer and fewer new recordings of undiscovered and underperformed music are being made, mainly because of the financial risk, a disproportionate number of CDs and SACDs are devoted to Tchaikovsky’s best known compositions, and released without much thought to redundancy. Experienced listeners may feel that this is overkill, and certainly the frequency of reissues of Tchaikovsky’s most famous music may signal a lack of imagination on the part of the major labels.

But beginners who don’t have much or any classical background should feel relieved that so much is available. They will have no trouble finding any of Tchaikovsky’s major works, and even his most obscure music has found its way to disc. Because Tchaikovsky’s music is immediately accessible, highly tuneful, stylistically varied, and widely available, newcomers should start here and explore as much of it as possible. From there, it should be easy to branch out toward Tchaikovsky’s contemporaries – Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, Antonin Dvorak, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin, Modest Mussorgsky, Sergey Rachmaninov – and eventually get to know many more composers who came before and after them. It’s possible to acquire a considerable amount of musical knowledge from concentrating on just one master, and because Tchaikovsky is quite possibly the most user-friendly of them all, his music is an excellent choice for all beginners. Indeed, if you have enjoyed the samples here, you’ve already begun to appreciate some of the best that classical music has to offer.

Not surprisingly, the soundtrack to Michael Jackson’s documentary This Is It topped the Billboard Top 200 albums chart, selling 373,000 copies. Jackson’s last chart-topping album was 2001’s HIStory. Sting, Jack Johnson, Tech N9ne and the Swell Season made strong debuts this week. [RollingStone.com]

The Pixies kicked off the U.S. portion of their Doolittle tour on Wednesday night at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Palladium, playing the album in its entirety along with B-sides such as “Weird at My School” and “Bailey’s Walk.” For their encore, they reached back to Surfer Rosa’s “Gigantic” and “Where Is My Mind?” [NME.com]

Just in case you need another way to own the Beatles’ catalog, Apple Corps is coming out with a limited-edition USB drive shaped like – what else? – an apple. The drive contains all 14 reissued albums in stereo plus the reissues’ multimedia files; 30,000 of the drives, which will be available in the U.S. on December 8 and in the U.K. on December 7, will be made. [Pitchfork.com]

Liars announced their fifth album Sisterworld for an early 2010 release with a cryptic website featuring nature videos. A less cryptic press release revealed that this is the first album the band has recorded in the U.S. since 2004’s They Were Wrong, So We Drowned and that the band worked with Jon Brion and producer Tom Biller. [Prefixmag.com, TheSisterWorld.com]

The Guardian wonders, “what’s with all the bad album covers?” [Guardian.co.uk]

The Weezer Snuggie is so two days ago. Behold the Owl City onesie! [Idolator.com]

Taylor Swift will double-up as host and musical guest during this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live. Only a small clump of stars have handled that load in the past, including Britney Spears (who, at 18 years old, became the youngest host to do so) and Justin Timberlake (who won an Emmy for his work on the show). In a promo for the episode, Swift happily spoofed the now-infamous Kanye West incident, later stating that she “wants to go completely, 100 percent in” with her role. [MTV.com]

Jack White may be involved with at least three high-caliber bands, but the man knows his limits. When approached by Slash to take part in the former GNR guitarist’s solo album, White reportedly refused to sing, offering instead to play guitar and drums. The record, “Slash & Friends,” is expected to receive an early 2010 release. [Spinner.com]

Following Bloc Party’s decision to take an indefinite break, frontman Kele Okereke has announced plans for a solo album. Producer Hudson Mohawke and American rap outfit Spank Rock are reportedly involved with the project. [NME.com]

Whitney Houston will kick off her overseas tour with a pair of headlining concerts in Russia. The two December dates are the first concerts announced since the release of “I Look To You,” while the tour will be Houston’s first jaunt in over a decade. [Variety.com]

Daryl Hall and John Oates will “serve as the voices of reason and temptation” during a string of episodes for “The Cleveland Show,” a spinoff of Fox’s popular cartoon “Family Guy.” The singing duo will portray an angel and a devil sitting on Ceveland’s shoulder, giving him advice. [Spinner.com]

In other legal news, No Doubt is suing Activision, maker of the popular videogame Band Hero. The reason? Gamers can use No Doubt’s avatars at any point during gameplay, regardless of the music being replicated onscreen. In a lawsuit filed today against Activision, No Doubt argues that such a breach of contract turns the band into “a virtual karaoke circus act.” [RollingStone.com]

Chris Brown has unveiled the futuristic cover art for Graffiti, the singer’s first release since his highly publicized attack on Rihanna earlier this year. The image features a suit-clad, guitar-wielding Brown aiming a can of spray paint at a clump of cartoon cartoons. [MTV.com]

Guitarist James Williamson will reunite with the Stooges for a 2010 tour, marking Williamson’s first run with the band in nearly three decades. [BBC.co.uk]

Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” is now the top pop song in the country, making Lady Gaga the first musician in the 17-year history of Billboard’s Pop Songs chart to issue four number one singles from a debut album. Avril Lavigne and Ace of Base are tied for second place, both having notched three chart-topping hits from their debuts. [Billboard.com]

Mere hours after the release of his solo debut, Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas has announced his next project: a cover of the holiday song “I Wish It Was Christmas Today,” which originated during a Saturday Night Live skit starring Horatio Sanz, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, and Tracy Morgan. [Pitchfork.com]

If you want to destroy my sweater, go ahead… as long as you leave my Snuggie alone. Just in time for the holiday season, Weezer has unveiled its own band-branded line of Snuggies, which can be purchased in tandem with the group’s newest album, Raditude. For the more lucrative fan, we recommend the Safari Snuggie deluxe package. [Spinner.com]

This Is It was a box office thriller over Halloween weekend, earning $101 million dollars worldwide in its first weekend of release. This secures the film a longer theatrical run than its planned two-week engagement. The movie made $32.5 million in the United States and $68.5 million internationally. [Billboard.com]

R.I.P. Joe Maneri, the saxophonist and clarinetist who helped pioneer microtonal music. Maneri reinvented the octave as a 72-note unit with pitch intervals rarely heard in European music traditions, taught theory, composition, and performance technique at the New England Conservatory, and recorded for avant-garde jazz labels such as ECM and Tzadik in the ’90s and 2000s. Maneri was 82. [Guardian.co.uk]

This weekend’s Voodoo Festival saw Eminem return to the stage for his first full-length concert in four years. Eminem played the festival on Saturday night, dressed in black and backed by a rock band dressed as skeletons. [Gigwise.com]

Lil Wayne and New Orleans rapper Birdman are being sued by Thomas Marasciullo, who claims the duo put his spoken-word recordings on their 2006 album Like Father, Like Son and Birdman’s 5 * Stunna. Marasciullo says he first discovered the recordings were on these records when his daughter attempted to buy a ringtone of one of the songs from Like Father, Like Son. [NME.com]

Mediaite puts Christopher Walken’s spoken word version of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” into an historical pop culture context. No, really. [Mediaite.com]

Jim Morrison once said, “I believe in a long, prolonged, derangement of the senses in order to obtain the unknown.” Check out more of Clash Music’s 100 most outrageous quotes in music. [Clashmusic.com]

Title Tracks
John Davis was in Q and Not U, he was in Georgie James and now he’s got his own band called Title Tracks. We’ve been digging their track “Black Bubblegum” for what seems like ages, the mix of super hooky melodies and wiry post-punk guitars is a winner. There’s a single out on Dischord now, album to follow soon (we hope).

White Wires
This band of teenage misfits from Canada just flat out rock & roll it with no muss, fuss or nonsense.

The Uptown Bums
There are a lot of bands in Texas these days that are ripping off some fierce rock & roll these days. These rambunctious are one of the best.

Teenage Cool Kids
Also from Texas, also hotter than the taco we had for lunch, these kids make a happy, cheerful racket.

Those Darlins
It’s hard to pull of the whole country punk thing but these darlin’s do it with style and sass to spare.

Boogie Boarder
High gain and low production values collide to make noise rock with a touch of pop hidden under all of the fuzz and distortion.

Screaming Females
Joan Jett for the fuzzed-out indie rock set.

Riff Cannon
Make sure to wear your OSHA approved protective sleeveless jean jacket when Riff Cannon start firing off their monster stoner rock riffs.

Speaking of ROCK & ROLL!!! OMG!!! NFW!!! R&R!!!!

OR!!!!

Taylor Mitchell, a rising songwriter on the Canadian folk scene, was killed by coyotes while hiking this week. The 19 year-old was visiting Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia when the animals attacked. A Canadian Folk Music Awards nominee, Mitchell had visited the park during the middle of her east coast tour. [CNN.com]

We Are The Fallen, a rock group featuring American Idol alum Carly Smithson and three members of Evanescence, has signed a major-label deal with Universal Republic. The band’s debut is expected to arrive in early 2010. [Blabbermouth.net]

Despite being reported dead via a whirlwind network of blog posts, Chuck Biscuits is apparently alive and living in Seattle, says the drummer’s siblings. [NME.com]

The more the merrier. Britney Spears shakes, shimmies, and smirks her way through the new risqué video for “3,” the lead single from her upcoming hits album, The Singles Collection. [BritneySpears.com]

The title track from Adam Lambert’s debut album, For Your Entertainment, premiered on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show this morning and is currently streaming on the singer’s website. While his previous single, “Time for Miracles,” was a dramatic ballad reminiscent of American Idol coronation song “No Boundaries,” “For Your Entertainment” takes its cues from glam rock and dance-pop. [RollingStone.com]

Speaking of Jackson, PopEater presents a list of musicians whose estates continue to earn big money after they died. [PopEater.com]

The soundtrack to The Twilight Saga: New Moon topped the Billboard 200, selling 153,000 copies in its first full week of release. This makes it the year’s second soundtrack to hit number one; the first was the music to Hannah Montana: The Movie. Tim McGraw, Joss Stone and Rammstein also made strong debuts on the Billboard 200. [Billboard.com]

Drummer Chuck Biscuits, who played with Danzig, Social Distortion and Black Flag among other punk and hard rock bands, died on Saturday at age 44 after a prolonged battle with throat cancer. [JGTwo.wordpress.com]

The Foo Fighters will play a show on Facebook this Friday as the band ramps up to the release of their greatest hits collection next Tuesday. [Gigwise.com]

Check out this free mix by Dâm-Funk. [FactMagazine.co.uk]

Lou Barlow gives La Roux’s “Bulletproof” the acoustic indie-rock treatment. [Spin.com]

Let the Kills’ Alison Mosshart and the Wild Beasts get you in the Halloween spirit with spooky short stories. [TheQuietus.com]