A silver cigarette case with an overlay crown and a monogram entered the Museum of Music in March 1996. The letters of the monogram “PTch” (“ПЧ”) clearly indicate that the owner of the cigarette case was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

In the period from 1871 to 1879, Tchaikovsky repeatedly visited the estate of Nizy in the Kharkiv Governorate, which belonged to his friend Nikolay Dmitriyevich Kondratyev. His daughter Nadezhda recalled,

Tchaikovsky dedicated the piano piece “Evening Dreams” to Kondratyev, opus 19 No. 1. The composer highly regarded Nikolay Kondratyev’s servant, Sasha Legoshin, and noted his natural intelligence and general awareness, rare for a person of the lower class.

In the summer of 1887, Legoshin accompanied the terminally ill Kondratyev when he was undergoing treatments in the Aachen springs, in Germany. In August, Kondratyev was visited by Tchaikovsky.

Kondratyev died on October 3, 1887 in Aachen, Germany. Tchaikovsky was unable to attend his friend’s funeral. However, in October 1887, he visited the Kondratyevs’ house in St. Petersburg several times. On November 7, the composer left the city. Perhaps, in saying goodbye and in memory of the sad events, Tchaikovsky decided to make a valuable gift to Legoshin — to present him with the silver cigarette case. But apparently, he did not have time to call on him and asked his brother Modest to do it. Modest Tchaikovsky mentioned in his diary that he had breakfast with Legoshin on November 7, and on November 12 he wrote that he had visited Legoshin and gave him the cigarette case.

Tchaikovsky’s trip to Aachen was reflected in music: there he completed the orchestral suite “Mozartiana” — a tribute to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The composer said, “It is to Mozart that I am obliged for the fact that I have dedicated my life to music. He gave the first impulse to my musical powers and made me love music more than anything else in the world.” Tchaikovsky also composed Pezzo Capriccioso for cello and orchestra in Aachen. He was very inspired and completed this piece in just one week. “The Pezzo” was written in B minor, the same key as the Symphony No. 6, composed six years later.