{ program notes
repertoire, and it has remained perhaps
the most popular concerto ever written.
Even Rachmaninoff’s celebrated piano
concertos were closely modeled on it.
But the first person to hear it pronounced it a failure. This was Nikolai
Rubinstein, renowned pianist and
conductor, founder of the Moscow Conservatory, and usually Tchaikovsky’s
staunch friend and supporter. Not being
a concert pianist himself, Tchaikovsky
had brought the concerto to Rubinstein
on Christmas Eve 1874 for advice as to
how to make the solo part most effective. This is how the composer remembered the occasion:
“I played the first movement. Not a
single word, not a single comment! …
I summoned all my patience and played
through to the end. Still silence. I stood
up and asked, ‘Well?’ ”
“Then a torrent poured forth from
Nikolai Gregorievich’s mouth. … My
concerto, it turned out, was worthless
and unplayable — passages so fragmented, so clumsy, so badly written as
to be beyond rescue — the music itself
was bad, vulgar — here and there I had
stolen from other composers — only
two or three pages were worth preserving — the rest must be thrown out
or completely rewritten. … This was
censure, indiscriminate, and deliberately
designed to hurt me to the quick. … ‘I
shall not alter a single note,’ I replied.
‘I shall publish the work exactly as it
stands!’ And this I did.”
Although this episode threw Tchaikovsky into a deep depression, he still
had energy and faith enough in his work
to submit the concerto to Hans von
Bülow, a German pianist-conductor as
famous as Rubinstein, who was looking
for a new showpiece for his upcoming
American tour. Von Bülow took on the
work with enthusiasm and played its
world premiere on October 25, 1875
in Boston. The Bostonians gave it a tumultuous reception, and the First Piano
Concerto never looked back.
This is a concerto in which gorgeous,
inventive orchestral writing meets one
of the great virtuoso piano parts of
the repertoire. And it is enriched by a
14 O v ertur e |
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Tchaikovsky
This is a concerto in which
gorgeous, inventive
orchestral writing meets one
of the great virtuoso piano
parts of the repertoire.
cornucopia of marvelous Tchaikovskian
melodies, the first of which forms
the introduction to movement one.
Launched by Tchaikovsky’s beloved
horns, it sweeps grandly through the
orchestra. The pianist serves at first
as the orchestra’s accompanist, but he
makes his presence strongly felt with
massive chords ringing from bottom to
top of the keyboard. This big Romantic
opening eventually fades, and a melody
that most composers would kill for is
gone, never to return.
In the first of several dramatic mood
shifts, the pianist now attacks a quick,
skitt