Dir.: Ken Russell; Cast: Richard Chamberlain, Glenda Jackson, Max Adrian, Christopher Gable, Kenneth Colley, Izabella Telezynska, Sabina Maydelle; UK 1970, 122 min.
Blending the crass with the ethereal – as was his wont – Ken Russell billed his portrait of Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) as “a romance about a homosexual married to a nymphomaniac”.
Riding high on his success with Women in Love, United Artists allowed Russell a lavish budget for The Music Lovers, and it was completed in the same year as Russell’s Richard Strauss biopic Dance of the Seven Veils for the BBC.
As a director of sober BBC biopics and large screen escapism, Russell was having a field day. Dance of the Seven Veils was only aired once, until quite recently, after the Strauss family forbade any music by Richard Strauss to be played in the feature because they misinterpreted the composer being shown as a staunch Nazi, which the archive material shows quite clearly he was.
The Music Lovers, on the other hand, is aesthetically much closer to Russell’s Mahler portrait of 1974. Based on the letters between Tchaikovsky (Chamberlain) and his benefactor Madame Nadezhda von Meck (Telezynska) and edited by Catherine Drinker Bowen and Barbara von Meck, Melvyn Bragg’s script has operatic proportions but uses dialogue very sparsely, leaving the music to stand out for itself.
In a romantic setting, we first meet the composer with his lover Count Chiluvsky (Gable). But homosexuality was illegal in Czarist Russia and so fellow composers at the conservatoire, including Rubinstein (Adrian) had started gossiping. Tchaikovsky takes an aggressive and – as it turned out – not too wise approach to the dilemma: he marries the over-sexed and rather fragile Antonina Miliukova (Jackson). The marriage ends in disaster with Antonina becoming more and more unhinged, finally ending up in a psychiatric ward.
Tchaikovsky dearly loves his family, brother Modest (Colley) and favourite sister Sasha (Maydelle), but he also has a horrible memory of his beloved mother’s death which will, in the end, mirror his own. He transfers all his attentions to Madame von Meck, who lives in Switzerland. On her estate, the composer takes it easy, while von Meck travels in Europe. In reality the two never met, but in the feature von Meck is seen watching the composer while asleep. The episodic character of the narrative, combining Tchaikovsky’s music and psychological estate, as it does in the 1812 Overture, is less jarring than in later features such as Lisztomania.
With much help from the great Douglas Slocombe (Rollerball, Hedda) and his sweepingly romantic images, The Music Lovers just stays on the right side of the line between opulent drama and over-the-top showmanship. Richard Chamberlain (1934-2025), who died at the ripe old age of 90, may well be remembered for his TV appearances at Dr Kildare, but here he flexes his outstanding talents alongside Jackson as their make for turbulent bedfellows as a newly married couple, set to the emotional tones of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. The Music Lovers is the highlight of Russell’s stylistic achievement. AS
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