What is The Tchaikovsky about? When I describe it to friends and readers, I find myself reciting two distinct summaries. The first is as follows: The Tchaikovsky is about a little girl who is a virtuoso on the violin and wants to play the most difficult composition every written before a critical audience with a world class orchestra. When I tell people that, they advise me to make the story more interesting and up to date. Perhaps the girl is a zombie, a blood-sucking serial killer, or a space alien in disguise. They want to know what's with this girl and whether there is action, sex and violence in the story. When I tell people that she is only obsessed to play the composition, people quickly lose interest and move on to another topic. The second summary goes something like this: The Tchaikovsky is about a criminal attorney who reluctantly defends a psychic accused of kidnapping a young girl. The paranormal psychologist claims he is helping the little girl who is haunted by a ghost. The ghost is an obsessive-compulsive, frustrated musician and will not release the little girl until she plays the most difficult violin concerto ever written. So the psychic psychologist decides to perform an exorcism at a music hall in New York to free the girl. Naturally the girl's parents think he is certifiable. This version holds people's interest a bit longer and results in a flood of tangential questions. Most of the questions center on whether or not the psychologist is really a psychic or just a con artist; is the child really possessed; why is the ghost obsessed with the music? What people tend to ignore is the nature of the music. Everyone claims to know the Tchaikovsky, everyone has heard it; some can even whistle one or two themes from it. But how many really understand what is necessary to play that particular piece of music? When you ask a violinist what it takes to play the only violin piece Tchaikovsky ever wrote - the Violin Concerto in D - the musician's eyes roll and a lot of hyperbole is used in explaining what is needed to tackle the musical gymnastics of this composition. And when you ask a world class virtuoso about the Tchaikovsky, you are rewarded with technical details and insight into how very hard and disciplined is the life of any soloist who hungers to add this particular piece of music to a repertoire. This story is about obsession. It is an obsession with perfection so strong it infects even those who are done with this world but can't leave until they influence the next generation of musicians. Ultimately, the Tchaikovsky is an obsession for perfection that reaches across all boundaries. E. G. Sergoyan August 25, 2016
