ExclusiveTchaikovsky: Piano Concerto And Orchestras N.1 - in B flat minor Op.23 - II. Andantino

【Classical music and nature 古典音樂小站】Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto And Orchestras N.1 - in B flat minor Op.23 - II. Andantino. This beautiful piece was preserved by European Archive. It has Creative Commons license (Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal) and is provided through www.musopen.org.

Tchaikovsky revised the Piano Concerto No. 1 three times, the last in 1888, which is the version usually played.

There is some confusion about who the concerto was originally dedicated to. It has long been thought that Tchaikovsky first dedicated it to Nikolai Rubinstein, and Michael Steinberg writes that Rubinstein's name is crossed out in the autograph score. However, in his biography of Tchaikovsky, David Brown writes that the work was never dedicated to Rubinstein. Tchaikovsky hoped that Rubinstein would perform it at one of the concerts of the Russian Musical Society in Moscow in 1875. For this reason he showed the work to him and another musical friend, Nikolai Hubert, at the Moscow Conservatory on 24 December 1874/5 January 1875, three days after its completion, and Brown writes: "This occasion has become one of the most notorious incidents in the composer's biography". Three years later, Tchaikovsky told his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, what had happened:

I played the first movement. Not a word, not a single remark! If you only knew how stupid and intolerable is the situation of a man who cooks and serves a meal to a friend who eats it in silence! Oh, for a word, for a friendly attack, but for God's sake, a word of sympathy, even if not of praise. Rubinstein was building up his storm and Hubert was waiting to see what would happen and whether there would be a reason to join one side or the other. Above all, I did not want a verdict on the artistic aspect. My need was for remarks on virtuoso piano technique. R's eloquent silence was of the greatest importance. He seemed to say: "My friend, how can I speak of details when the whole is antipathetic?" I fortified myself with patience and played to the end. Still silence. I stood up and asked: "Well?" Then a torrent poured out of Nikolai Grigoryevich's mouth, soft at first, then growing more and more into the sound of a Jupiter tonans. It turned out that my concerto was worthless and unplayable; passages were so fragmented, so clumsy, so badly written that they were beyond salvation; the work itself was bad, vulgar; in places I had stolen from other composers; only two or three pages were worth preserving; the rest must be thrown away or completely rewritten. "Here, for example, this - what's that all about?" (he caricatured my music on the piano) "And this? How can anyone ..." etc. etc. The main thing I can't reproduce is the tone in which all this was said. In a word, a disinterested person in the room might have taken me for a madman, a talented, senseless hack who had come to submit his rubbish to an eminent musician.

Having noticed my stubborn silence, Hubert was astonished and shocked that a man who had already written a great deal and given a course in free composition at the Conservatoire should be given such a ticking off, that such a contemptuous judgement should be pronounced on him without appeal, such a judgement as one would not pronounce on a pupil with the slightest talent who had neglected some of his homework - then he began to explain N.G.'s judgement, not disputing it in the least, but merely softening what His Excellency had said with too little ceremony.

I was not only astonished 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 given in such a harsh and unfriendly manner. I need and will always need friendly criticism, but this was nothing like friendly criticism. It was an indiscriminate, determined rebuke, delivered in such a way as to wound me to the quick. I left the room without a word and went upstairs. In my excitement and anger I could not say anything. Then R., seeing how upset I was, asked me to go to one of the other rooms. There he repeated that my concerto was impossible, pointed out many places where it would have to be completely reworked, and said that if I reworked the concerto according to his demands within a limited time, he would do me the honour of playing my thing at his concert. "I will not change a single note," I replied, "I will publish the work exactly as it is!" So I did.

The scenery was filmed by Simone Schlegel and the video was edited by Wenjing Ma.



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