MASTERWORKS 3
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY: BORN: May 7, 1840, in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka province, Russia DIED: November 6, 1893, in Saint Petersburg WORK COMPOSED: 1874-75, revisions 1879, 1888 WORLD PREMIERE: October 25, 1875, in Boston, Massachusetts, Harvard Musical Association, Hans von Bülow, piano; Benjamin Johnson Lang conducting PERFORMANCE HISTORY: This evening’s concert is the twelfth featuring this concerto on the DSSO’s Masterworks Series. Soloists for the previous performances were Duluth pianist Miriam Blair (in 1934 and 1944), Jesús Maria Sanromá (1949), Byron Janis (1963), Van Cliburn (on a pair of sold-out nonsubscription concerts in 1970), Andre-Michel Schub (1977, led by DSSO Music Director candidate Andrew Schenck), Natalia Trull (1990), Horacio Gutiérrez (1992), John Browning (on a 1998 all-Tchaikovsky Gala concert), Antonio Pompa-Baldi (2005), and Katherine Chi (September 17, 2011, led by Music Director candidate Rei Hotoda). At the New Year’s Eve Concert in 1988, the first movement was played by Beth Gilbert, the Orchestra’s Principal Keyboardist. In 1942 duopianists Jacques Fray and Mario Braggiotti played an arrangement of excerpts from the first movement with the DSSO. INSTRUMENTATION: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings and solo piano. 20 D U L U T H S U P E R I O R S Y M P H O N Y O R C H E S T R A
DURATION: 32 minutes. It’s hard to believe that one of the world’s most beautiful and recognizable works of music had such a turbulent birth. Such was the case with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. In November 1874, Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother Anatoly, “I am now immersed in the composition of a piano concerto. I definitely want [Nikolai] Rubinstein to play it at his concert; it’s going with much difficulty…” At this time, at age 34, Tchaikovsky was a professor at the new Moscow Conservatory while Nikolai Rubinstein was the director of the conservatory from its founding until his death in 1881. He was a younger brother of Tchaikovsky’s teacher Anton Rubinstein, who was then quite well known as a composer. The two brothers thought very highly of Tchaikovsky and Nikolai conducted the premieres of a significant number of his works, which makes even more curious Nikolai’s reaction to hearing the concerto on Christmas Eve of 1874. Tchaikovsky took the manuscript to Rubinstein to ask about some technical details in the solo part. “I played the first movement,” Tchaikovsky recalled. “Not a word, not an observation! […] Rubinstein was preparing his thunder.” After Tchaikovsky finished, Rubinstein declared that the concerto “was worthless, that it was impossible to play it, that its passages were clumsy, awkward, so awkward that they could not be corrected, that as a composition it was bad, that I stole from here and there, that there are only two or three pages worth preserving […]” This may be the censored version as it elicited Tchaikovsky’s response, “I was not just astounded but outraged by the whole scene. I am no longer a boy trying his hand at composition and I no longer need lessons from anyone, especially when they are offered so harshly and in such a spirit of hostility.” Rubinstein said he would perform it, only if Tchaikovsky would make the alterations he demanded. The composer responded, “I shall not alter a single note; I shall publish the work exactly as it is.” He changed the dedication and asked Hans von Bülow, the distinguished pianist and conductor, if he would accept the dedication and perform the premiere. Von Bülow happily accepted it and, according to the composer’s wish, premiered it as far from Russia as possible - just in case it failed miserably. The premiere was held in Boston with a pick-up orchestra of the Harvard Musical Association (before the founding of the Boston Symphony Orchestra this organization performed regular orchestra concerts). The American audience loved it and demanded an immediate encore of the finale! The 20-year-old George W. Chadwick, who would become one of America’s leading composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, recalled the premiere
