Award-winning actor and pianist Hershey Felder presents the UK premiere of Our Great Tchaikovsky. Featuring Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s most popular compositions including his Nutcracker Ballet, 1812 Overture, 6th Symphony and more.
With a book by Felder, Our Great Tchaikovsky is a time-bending tale of music and politics and the story of one of the world’s most beloved composers, directed by Felder collaborator Trevor Hay. Our Great Tchaikovsky has broken box office records and garnered unanimous critical acclaim across the US since its debut in January of this year.
A combination of this success and the current relevance of the themes explored has spurred Felder to bring this new show directly to the UK in place of the previously planned Bernstein/Berlin productions. Tchaikovsky’s life story has a particular resonance for our times, and Felder’s unique combination of theatrical performance and pianistic skill promises to bring Tchaikovsky to life in a completely original manner.
The composer of beautiful ballets Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and ferocious and melodic symphonic works, piano concerti, overtures, operas and chamber music, a healthy 53-year-old Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere of his enigmatic Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique” in 1893 in St. Petersburg, and, nine days later, he was dead. To this day, how and why he died is still a mystery. Our Great Tchaikovsky endeavours to understand why this is still the case.
Recently named in TIME Magazine’s top ten theatre artists for 2016, Hershey Felder has also previously brought to life the stories and music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, and George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Leonard Bernstein. Felder also wrote, produced and directed last season’s critically acclaimed, box office hit, The Pianist of Willesden Lane at the former St. James Theatre and now returns to newly named The Other Palace bringing a unique blend of piano virtuosity and musical biography with this latest production.
