Hershey Felder has made a career out of doing one-man shows about famous composers – Gershwin, Berlin, Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven, Bernstein, and Tchaikovsky. Always informative, always entertaining, as actor and musician, he immerses himself in the character’s story.

For me, the most revelatory fact that Felder imparted was Tchaikovsky’s supposed disdain for two of his most popular pieces, the 1812 Overture and the Nutcracker Suite, both of which were clear favorites of the audience. Afterward, I wished I had asked Felder whether he shared Tchaikovsky’s opinion.

Felder played portions of almost all Tchaikovsky’s best known pieces. He didn’t play Marche Slav (a childhood favorite of mine – it was a dark time). He also didn’t play anything from Eugene Onegin (not to be confused with Eugene, Oregon), though he did vocalize a short passage (vocalize is the best description I could find for something that’s not singing, scatting, humming, or mumbling).

In regard to Tchaikovsky’s youth, I remember Victor Borge saying that “Pete” was born in Votkinsk, May 7 1840, but never played out in the streets of Votkinsk like the other little children of Votkinsk because when he was one month old his parents moved to St. Petersburg (it’s funnier when you hear Borge say it, but I couldn’t find an online recording). Actually, as Felder noted, Tchaikovsky was eight years old when his family moved (thereby crushing my adoration of Borge).

Felder joked during the Q and A session at the end of the show that the average audience members were in their 20’s. Maybe 120’s. Okay, not really, as the oldest person alive today is said to be only 117. The audience probably didn’t average a day over 85, the new 84. As the youngsters in the audience, we took the stairs down from the third floor theater after the show, as most of the others circled the two small elevators like piranha.