Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) is often hailed as Russia’s great­est com­pos­er (from a strong field), and his works epit­o­mise the emo­tion­al depth for which Russ­ian music is known. You might say he was some­thing of a Russ­ian Beethoven, with the same genius for dra­mat­ic inten­si­ty and emo­tion­al range, and indeed Tchaikovsky deeply respect­ed and acknowl­edged Beethoven. Although his true love was in fact Mozart, it is Beethoven’s influ­ence that is evi­dent in his com­po­si­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly his lat­er sym­phonies such as his Sixth Sym­pho­ny, the Pathé­tique, with its explo­ration of melan­cho­lia. Today, how­ev­er, I’m high­light­ing his remark­able Piano Con­cer­to No. 1 in B♭ minor, Op. 23.

It’s one of those tunes from the world of clas­si­cal music which you instant­ly recog­nise when you hear it even if you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know it from its title. It was com­posed dur­ing the sev­er­al months lead­ing up to Feb­ru­ary 1875 and first per­formed in Octo­ber of that year, in Boston, by pianist Hans von Bülow. It was to become one of the best known piano con­cer­ti of all time and in a nut­shell it is a sub­lime piece of music. Strange then, that it should have been so round­ly slat­ed by the man who Tchaikovsky had orig­i­nal­ly want­ed to play it before approach­ing von Bülow, name­ly Niko­lai Rubin­stein.

As the sto­ry is relat­ed, Tchaikovsky invit­ed Rubin­stein to the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry to demo his com­po­si­tion, just three days after com­plet­ing it. Full of antic­i­pa­tion and hope that Rubin­stein would be blown away and agree to play it, Tchaikovsky sat at the piano and played the first move­ment. To Tchaikovsky’s cha­grin not a sin­gle word was spo­ken and after a peri­od of silence he could stand it no more: “Well?” he said, to which Rubinstein’s tact­less and rather bru­tal response is described in Tchaikovsky’s own words:

“It turned out that my con­cer­to was worth­less and unplayable; pas­sages were so frag­ment­ed, so clum­sy, so bad­ly writ­ten that they were beyond res­cue; 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.” Rubin­stein went on to say “that if I reworked the con­cer­to accord­ing to his demands, then he would do me the hon­our of play­ing my thing at his con­cert. ‘I shall not alter a sin­gle note,’ I answered, ‘I shall pub­lish the work exact­ly as it is!’”.

You can only imag­ine the indig­na­tion Tchaikovsky must have felt at that cut­ting cri­tique. And that’s why Tchaikovsky approached von Bülow to play it…

Post­script: Rubin­stein changed his opin­ion of the piece and became a big fan (you know what it’s like, you some­times need to hear an album three or four times before prop­er­ly appre­ci­at­ing it), and final­ly even played it, with gus­to, in Moscow, St Peters­burg and Paris, in 1878.

Let’s hear the open­ing four min­utes as played by the sev­en­teen-year-old prodi­gy Evge­ny Kissin, under the direc­tion of Her­bert von Kara­jan and the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra, Salzburg 1988.