Tchaikovsky
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Vadim Peresleni

Nephew of the composer's brother-in-law, Lev Davydov (b. ca.1860; d. ca.1900), born Vadim Vladimiroivich Peresleni (Вадим Владимирович Переслени).

Vadim was the younger son of Vladimir Peresleni and his wife Yekaterina (b. Davydova), and the nephew of the composer's brother-in-law, Lev Davydov. He left university without completing his degree and worked in various departments of the civil service. In the last years of his life he taught French at a secondary school in Tver [1].

Tchaikovsky often visited the Peresleni family when he lived in Moscow during the 1870s, and remained friendly with them throughout his life. The names of Vadim and his brother Nikolay (nicknamed "Kokodes") appear frequently in Tchaikovsky's correspondence with his brothers Modest and Anatoly, as well as in the diary he kept during his stay in Tiflis in April 1886. Judging from some critical remarks made by Tchaikovsky, Vadim seems to have been a rather dissolute young man [2].

Corresponence with Vadim Peresleni:

• 11 letters from Tchaikovsky to Vadim Peresleni have survived, dating from 1885 to 1893.

Notes:

1. See the note by Vasily Kiselev in: Чайковский на московской сцене (1940), p. 461 [back]
2. See Alexander Poznansky, Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man (1993), p. 472, and the same author's more recent Russian book, Петр Чайковский: Биография (2009), vol. 2, p. 259 [back]