Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season January-February 2018 | Page 27

TCHAIKOVSKY PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1 have to be Tchaikovsky’s First. Written in 1874 – 75, it was the first Russian piano concerto to enter the standard concert 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 a concert pianist himself, Tchaikovsky had brought the concerto to Rubinstein on Christmas Eve, 1874 for advice. 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 was, 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 marvelous Tchaikovskian melodies, the first of which forms the introduction to movement one. Launched by the horns, it sweeps grandly through the orchestra. The pianist serves at first as the orchestra’s accompanist, but she makes her presence strongly felt with massive chords ringing from the bottom to the 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, skittish tune based on a Ukrainian folksong, which is the movement’s true principal theme. The tempo eventually eases, and in another shift, clarinets introduce a lovely melody, which gives the pianist opportunity to show her poetic side. After the development section, this theme appears again, now soaring rhapsodically. Movement two rocks gently on a poignant, lullaby-like theme, introduced by the flute. Sparkling, high-speed music fills the movement’s middle section. Its rollicking tune, introduced by the violins, is from a French song popular in Russia at the time, “Il faut s’amuser, danser et rire” (“One should enjoy oneself, dance and laugh”). The spirited rondo finale features a dashing refrain theme whose emphatic rhythms stress the second beat of each measure. It alternates with a rapturous waltz melody, introduced by the violins. A broad concluding coda energetically combines these themes, with the waltz ultimately dominating. And now comes one of the most famous of all virtuoso piano passages: a stupendous flight of fast double-fisted octaves, sweeping up and down the keyboard. This leads to a grand apotheosis of the waltz, before the pianist and orchestra urge each other on to a blazing finish. RE: O T S O E BS TH t gifts • Grea lry ul jewe f i t u a e • B ’s a Alsop ography r t s e a • M te disc en comple r childr o f s k o c bo • Musi e! ch mor u m d n • A Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two Contact us at 410.783.8160 or [email protected] trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. Notes by Janet E. Bedell, © 201 8 JA N – F E B 2018 / OV E R T U R E 25