A WEEK OF ALL THINGS RUSSIAN.

Byline: Paul Denison The Register-Guard

Doomed lovers, dallying and dueling aristocrats, booming cannon and virtuoso soloists will make their presence felt this week as the Eugene Symphony presents a Tchaikovsky Festival that includes two concerts and several related events.

Having completed a Beethoven symphony cycle that stretched over his first two seasons as the orchestra's music director, conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, in his third season, has built a compact festival around two of the Russian composer's biggest hits.

Stefan Jackiw will be featured in the violin concerto on Thursday, and Stewart Goodyear will be the soloist in Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 on Saturday.

Initially slammed as unplayable and unlistenable by men whose opinions really mattered to the composer, these two stirring works have long been among his best known and most popular.

The concerts also will include two symphonic fantasies about lovers who did not live happily ever after: ``Francesca da Rimini'' on Thursday and ``Romeo & Juliet'' on Saturday.

Thursday's program also features the waltz from Tchaikovsky's opera ``Eugene Onegin'' and the Andante cantabile for strings.

On Saturday night's program, the 1812 Overture will bring the festival to a resounding conclusion with booming cannons and pealing church bells.

Both Eugene Symphony concerts will be at 8 p.m. in the Hult Center's Silva Concert Hall.

The festival will include several other related events, beginning as early as Tuesday, with the first of three free lectures.

Lectures

Alan Kimball from the UO's Russian and East European Studies Center will talk about "The Russian Golden Age" at 10 a.m. Tuesday in Room 198 at the UO School of Music, 961 E. 18th Ave.

Conductor Guerrero and violinist Jackiw will give a preview of the festival at noon Wednesday in the Hult Center's Studio One.

On Saturday, Kimball will give a talk before that evening's concert on the ``Historical Events of 1812'' at 7:15 p.m. in Studio One.

Another concert

Before the Eugene Symphony even gets into the act, the University of Oregon will set the stage musically with a Tchaikovsky chamber music program at 8 p.m. Wednesday in Beall Concert Hall at the UO School of Music.

Graduate students Cheryl Luan and Derek Newell will join the Oregon String Quartet (made up of faculty members Kathryn Lucktenberg, Fritz Gearhart, Leslie Straka and Steven Pologe) in the sextet ``Souvenir of Florence.''

Also, soprano Ann Tedards will sing three Tchaikovsky songs, accompanied by pianist David Riley. And music history professor Marian Smith will give a brief talk on Tchaikovsky dance music, with recorded and filmed examples.

Admission is $9 for the general public, $5 for students and senior citizens. Tickets will be sold at the door.

Other related events

A Russian dinner menu all week at Marche restaurant;

A Russian children's book exhibit ongoing at the Eugene Public Library, 100 W. 10th Ave.;

A free showing of Igor Tolankin's 1971 Russian film ``Tchaikovsky'' at 7 p.m. Tuesday in 180 Prince Lucien Campbell Hall, at 14th Avenue and Kincaid on the UO campus;

A free performance of excerpts from Tchaikovsky's ballets ``Sleeping Beauty'' and ``Swan Lake'' by Ballet Fantastique at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Hult Center's Studio One.

The symphony concerts

You don't really need to know the stories behind and within Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky's stirring and often heartbreakingly beautiful music, but they are good stories.

Here are some excerpts from program notes written for the two Eugene Symphony Orchestra concerts by Portland music writer James McQuillen:

Tchaikovsky wrote his violin concerto for Leopold Auer, who declined to play it on technical and artistic grounds. Adolf Brodsky gave the premiere performance with Hans Richter and the Vienna Philharmonic. Critic Eduard Hanslick savaged the composition, saying it "stinks to the ear." But Russian violinist David Oistrakh loved the piece and played it for a packed house in 1942 during the siege of Leningrad. Of the concerto's finale, McQuillen writes "the ferocious violin part is a thrill; it may be more pungent than sweet, but it's among the most exciting music Tchaikovsky ever wrote."

In Alexander Pushkin's verse novel, Eugene Onegin is a callow fellow who spurns a young woman's love and then goes to her party and flirts with her sister, who happens to be engaged to Onegin's best friend. A duel ensues. The waltz Tchaikovsky wrote for the opera "Eugene Onegin" is heard during that fateful party.

The Andante cantabile comes from a string quartet Tchaikovsky wrote to earn a quick and badly needed buck; he even borrowed the tune. But the Ukrainian melody moved novelist Leo Tolstoy to tears.

Francesca da Rimini fell in love with her husband's brother, Paolo, and enjoyed his company immensely until her husband popped up through a trap door and caught them in bed. Tchaikovsky shows his sympathy for her in the "tender central section," McQuillen writes, of a fantasy that is otherwise somber, furious and violent.

Like his violin concerto, Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto was spurned by the man to whom it was dedicated, the composer's friend and mentor, Nikolai Rubinstein. So Hans von Bulow did the honors, in Boston in 1875. Rubinstein later changed his mind about the piece, just as Auer did about the violin concerto.

McQuillen describes the concerto as "huge and stirring work" that deploys two themes - "and the soloist, surely exhausted by now" - in finale that reaches "a mighty crescendo and thunderous climax."

It took three guys to make "Romeo & Juliet": William Shakespeare to write the tragedy, Mily Alexeievich Balakirev to propose and outline the structure of a musical version and Tchaikovsky to actually write the music.

Tchaikovsky wrote his 1812 Overture on commission to help mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino, in which Russian forces stopped Napoleon in his tracks. McQuillen sums up the music: ``Czarist and French anthems duke it out on the battlefield, the Russians win, cannons salute and church bells peal.''

CONCERTS

Eugene Symphony's Tchaikovsky Festival

When: 8 p.m. Thursday with violinist Stefan Jackiw and 8 p.m. Saturday with pianist Stewart Goodyear

Where: Silva Concert Hall, Hult Center, Seventh and Willamette streets

How much: $18 to $38 (682-5000)

THE SOLOISTS

Stefan Jackiw, violin: Jackiw started playing the violin when he was 4, and although he is only 19, he has already performed with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra (in London), the Baltimore Symphony and the Boston Symphony. A student at Harvard University, he also is enrolled in the artist diploma program at the New England Conservatory of Music.

Stewart Goodyear, piano: In 2003, the 26-year-old made debuts with the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Pittsburgh Symphony. He also has performed with the San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra and Seattle Symphony. He has a master's degree from the Juilliard School of Music.

ON THE MENU

Russian dinner

What: In connection with the Tchaikovsky Festival, Marche restaurant will offer a prix fixe Russian menu.

Where: Marche, 296 E. Fifth Ave., 342-3612

When: This week

How much: $30

Menu: The appetizer will be blini (little buckwheat pancakes with caviar and chives), and the soup will be borscht (puree of roasted beets with creme fraiche and pickles). The main course will be chicken Kiev, served with sauteed spinach. Apple piroshki (a puff pastry turnover with apples and currants) will be served for dessert.

CAPTION(S):

P.I. Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)