Aleksey carried out everything as you had instructed him, that is, he set up the Christmas tree as a surprise, and around it lay my god, my idol, represented in all his divine works.
During his first visit to Prague in February 1888 as part of his concert tour of Western Europe, Tchaikovsky went on an excursion to the Villa Bertramka on the outskirts of the city and saw the room in which Mozart had stayed many times [7]. Later that year, when Tchaikovsky had settled into his new house in Frolovskoye, his publisher Jurgenson asked him whether he would be willing to undertake a translation into Russian of Aleksandr Ulybyshev's three-volume Nouvelle biographie de Mozart (1843). Tchaikovsky made a start on this, but, in view of the enormity of the enterprise and his own limited time, he suggested to Jurgenson that the commission be transferred to his brother Modest, and that he would simply go through the text to ensure that all the musical terms were rendered correctly [8]. He also offered to write a preface to the first volume. Modest duly worked on this translation over the following years, but in the end it was Laroche rather than Tchaikovsky who supplied the preface [9]. As a Christmas present at the end of 1888, Jurgenson secretly arranged for the Breitkopf & Härtel edition of Mozart's Complete Works to be sent to the composer in Frolovskoye. Tchaikovsky was overjoyed and wrote to his publisher of his "enthusiastic gratitude for the best, most valuable and most wonderful present I could ever have hoped to receive. Aleksey carried out everything as you had instructed him, that is, he set up the Christmas tree as a surprise, and around it lay my god, my idol, represented in all his divine works. I was as glad as a child. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!" [10].