None But the Lonely Heart

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed a set of six romances for voice and piano, Op. 6, in late 1869; the last of these songs is the melancholy "None but the Lonely Heart" (Russian: Нет, только тот, кто знал, romanized: Net, tol'ko tot, kto znal), a setting of Lev Mei's poem "The Harpist's Song" which in turn was a translation of "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt" from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. Tchaikovsky dedicated this piece to Alina Khvostova. The song was premiered by Russian mezzo-soprano Yelizaveta Lavrovskaya in Moscow in 1870, following it with its Saint Petersburg premiere the following year during an all-Tchaikovsky concert hosted by Nikolai Rubinstein; the latter was the first concert devoted entirely to Tchaikovsky's works.