The 175th Birth Anniversary of Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), Composer (Souvenir sheet).

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was the great Russian composer, conductor, teacher, musical and public figure.
He was born in Votkinsk, in the family of a mining engineer, chief of the Kama-Votkinsk factory. Tchaikovsky began playing the piano when he was 5 years old, and three years later he was reading and writing music.
In 1850-1859, Tchaikovsky studied at the Law School, then he was determined to serve in the Ministry of Justice. He started to take piano lessons from the famous pianist R. Kyundinger in 1855-1858.
Tchaikovsky enrolled at the Conservatory as part of its premiere class but held on to his Ministry post until the following year, wanting to make sure his course lay in music. From 1862 to 1865 he studied harmony and counterpoint with Zaremba. Rubinstein, director and founder of the Conservatory, taught instrumentation and composition. At the same time he was written the first major works for orchestra: Overture "The Storm" (a drama of Alexander Ostrovsky, 1864) and the Overture in F Major (1865), "Characteristic Dances", cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra on Schiller's ode "To Joy" (graduate work), chamber works. He left the service in May 1863, and started to give lessons.
In 1866, Peter Tchaikovsky was offered the post of professor of the Moscow Conservatory.
The composer has worked in almost all musical genres, has created a special melodic language, both able to translate subtle spiritual experiences of a person, and to generalize the large-scale ideas.
The most famous works are the ballet "Swan Lake" (1876); operas "Eugene Onegin" (1878) and "The Queen of Spades" (1890); the cycle of plays "The Seasons" (1876) and "Children's Album" (1878).
The stamp depicts a portrait of a composer, his facsimile and the building of the Moscow State Conservatory named after Pyotr Tchaikovsky (Russian cultural heritage), the margins of a souvenir sheet depict notes of "The Nutcracker" ballet, and the composition of lira and branches tied with ribbon.